Oral Answers to Questions

WORK AND PENSIONS

The Secretary of State was asked—

Worklessness

Michael Fabricant: What recent assessment he has made of trends in the level of worklessness among under 25-year-olds since 1997; and if he will make a statement.

Stephen Crabb: What recent assessment he has made of trends in the level of worklessness among under 25-year-olds since 1997.

Peter Hain: Claimant unemployment is falling for 18 to 24-year-olds and is down 138,000 since 1997.

Michael Fabricant: Now that the red flag has been hauled down and the yellow flag of cowardice has been hoisted, what is the Secretary of State's vision for youth unemployment, given that so many more people who have been on the new deal have gone back on to jobseeker's allowance?

Peter Hain: The truth is that, compared with when the Tories were in power, when young people had virtually no chance of getting a job in constituencies such as mine, unemployment has been cut, youth unemployment has been cut and long-term unemployment—more than a year—has been virtually eradicated. That is a record of which we are proud, and the new deal for young people has made an enormous contribution to that—a new deal opposed by the Conservatives.

Stephen Crabb: The number of young people leaving the new deal to go straight back to benefits has spiralled in recent years and the number of 18 to 20-year-olds not in education, employment or full-time training has increased sharply. Does not that show that the claim that youth unemployment has been virtually eradicated is nonsense and that, despite all the billions of pounds of expenditure on the new deal in the past five years, we still have a serious and growing problem with a hard core of unskilled, unmotivated young people who are effectively doing nothing with their lives?

Peter Hain: In the hon. Gentleman's constituency, long-term, six month-plus youth unemployment has fallen by 94 per cent. since we came to power. I can give him lots of other figures, including about the very high number of vacancies in his constituency. There are plenty of jobs in his constituency, and that is true right across the country. Yes, there is an issue about 16 to 17-year-olds, which we are addressing, but it would not be addressed by the bankrupt policies of the Conservatives.

Chris Ruane: What role does my right hon. Friend think city strategies can have in tackling worklessness among the under-25s?

Peter Hain: Those strategies can have an enormous role, and I congratulate my hon. Friend on chairing the city strategy project in Rhyl, which has got off to a flying start. He has brought together local employers and all the other agencies. The strategies are focused on tackling some of the problems right at the centre of our towns and cities that are still very serious and part of a legacy that we inherited 10 years ago. We are doing something about it.

Michael Penning: The hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) is doing something about it.

Peter Hain: My hon. Friend is indeed doing something about it, and I am glad that the hon. Gentleman is joining me in congratulating him on what he is doing in Rhyl to tackle some of the serious problems of people who are also involved in drugs and other problems in some of our most disadvantaged areas. In Rhyl, people are showing the way forward, and we will all need to consider whether that model can be applied elsewhere.

Frank Field: Given that, during the past three years, 2 million people have come to this country to work and have found work, does my right hon. Friend not feel that our welfare-to-work strategy is somewhat disappointing? Given that we are not now to have an election, might we have a debate in Government time on the new proposals that he intends to introduce to help and encourage more people to move from benefit to work?

Peter Hain: As my right hon. Friend knows, we are consulting, including with him, on how we take on the next stage of getting more people into work. The truth is that we have been incredibly successful in the past 10 years in tackling the main problem of those who are in and around the job market, with 2.7 million extra jobs in the past 10 years, about 800,000 of which involve those who have come from outside the country to work in Britain and are contributing to our economy. However, there is still a high level of people on long-term benefits, which we intend to tackle. That is why we published our Green Paper, "In work, better off: next steps to full employment", and I will certainly work with my right hon. Friend and anyone else who has ideas to contribute during the consultation that ends at the end of this month.

Chris Grayling: I welcome the Secretary of State back from the campaign trail. I have been wondering over the weekend whether he is one of the Cabinet's young Turks or grey beards.
	The Secretary of State talks about youth unemployment. According to the Office for National Statistics, overall youth unemployment is almost 50,000 higher than it was when the Government came to office. Does he accept that situation?

Peter Hain: As the Secretary of State responsible for the grey citizens in this country, I take pride in that role. Furthermore, when we look at our record on youth unemployment compared with what we inherited in 1997, we see the truth: the rates of both claimant and International Labour Organisation youth unemployment have fallen since 1997. The new deal for young people has reduced total and long-term youth unemployment and virtually eradicated long-term claimant unemployment—those claiming for a year or more. Those figures have gone down by 90 per cent. since 1997.
	Despite the continual attacks on the new deal for young people, independent assessment has shown that the total number claming jobseeker's allowance for more than six months would have been twice as high as it is now. That is all a result of our achievements, but we have got to do more—and we will do more.

Chris Grayling: I find it baffling when the Secretary of State talks about his achievements. According to the Office for National Statistics, the unemployment rate among 16 to 24-year-olds was 14.1 per cent. in 1997; today it is 14.5 per cent., and nearly 50,000 more young people are unemployed. When the Secretary of State said to this House,
	"Actually, youth unemployment has been all but eradicated"—[ Official Report, 18 July 2007; Vol. 463, c. 283.]
	was he telling the truth?

Peter Hain: I repeat to the hon. Gentleman the point that I have already repeated: long-term youth unemployment—those on the claimant count for more than a year—has been virtually eradicated. That is a fact. He can check the statistics with me; I am happy to exchange correspondence with him on the issue. The truth is that we have a good record on increasing the number of jobs for young people. We continue to do so. However, there are more young people in the under-25 age group in the labour market now. That accounts for some of the points made by the hon. Gentleman, but he should check his figures.

Barry Sheerman: Does my right hon. Friend agree that there is still a problem that we must resolve? Will he look at some of the exciting pilots that depend on intensive mentoring? There is one in east London and we are starting one in Huddersfield. Jobcentre Plus and bureaucracies such as learning and skills councils often get in the way of such pilots. Will he visit some of those interesting pilots?

Peter Hain: I am certainly happy to look into those projects. Yes, there is a whole issue about mentoring. The question is not only about getting young people into jobs, but about keeping them in those jobs; that is where mentoring comes in. Such mentoring is important for all sorts of categories of people who have been on long-term benefits, as it makes sure that they sustain their employment. When mentoring is applied, such people often do so.

Pensions

David Tredinnick: How many complaints he has received on the administration of pensions in 2007.

Mike O'Brien: Most individual complaints would be dealt with by pensions centres or the Pension Service chief executive. In respect of occupational pension schemes, complaints would be dealt with by internal procedures or the pensions ombudsman. It follows that few complaints would go to the Secretary of State; the Department does not therefore take account of the figure.

David Tredinnick: I am disappointed to hear that reply. When the Prime Minister was Chancellor, he was responsible for complicating occupational pension schemes to such an extent that many of them were shut down by the trustees.
	On another point, will the hon. and learned Gentleman explain why the unclaimed assets fund is being used only for youth projects? None of that money is going towards helping those pensioners who suffered so much through the failure of the schemes.

Mike O'Brien: Last week, the Conservative party claimed that unclaimed assets could be used—in pension and other funds, as far as I am aware—to make payments and refloat the lifeboat that was sunk in July by the report issued by the Government Actuary, Andrew Young. That report clearly stated that
	"we do not believe that...'unclaimed assets' are credible alternative funding sources."

John Butterfill: Does the hon. and learned Gentleman agree that there is a real problem in recruiting trustees for the administration of private pensions? That is partly due to the requirements put on pension funds by the regulator. For example, there is now a requirement for trustees to become professionally qualified. That has been difficult. In the case of our own scheme, which I have the honour to chair, all our trustees took the Pensions Management Institute examinations. However, it is proving increasingly difficult for other schemes to recruit people to become trustees given both the potential liabilities that they face and the requirement for additional learning. Before, it was considered sufficient for them to take appropriate professional advice.

Mike O'Brien: As it happens, I met the regulator this morning and discussed this very point with the chairman and the chief executive. There is concern about the level of qualifications that it appears that some trustees are obliged to achieve. As part of the deregulatory review, I want to look at the issue. I am not sure that the statute is the problem—it is more the guidance that seems to be given. As a result of the review, I hope that we will be able to make it much clearer that the level of competence required of trustees consists of a reasonable knowledge, plus common sense, and that we will not deter large numbers of people from becoming trustees at a time when we need them. The hon. Gentleman's point is well made.

John Redwood: How many complaints does the Minister know about concerning the very large sums of money taken out of funds each year under the tax policy of the previous Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the ineffectiveness of the regulator to resist those demands?

Mike O'Brien: Of course, the regulator's aim is to ensure that we have a stable and effective pensions scheme. By and large in recent years, since the office of the regulator has been established, it has gained credibility and increased confidence in the pensions industry. As a result of the creation of the regulator, we have a pensions industry that is much stronger than it was.

New Deal

Keith Vaz: What plans he has to visit Leicester to discuss the new deal.

Peter Hain: More than 1.8 million people have been helped into work through the new deal programme, including 11,790 people in Leicester, of whom 3,330 people are in my right hon. Friend's constituency, which I have of course visited at his invitation before.

Keith Vaz: I thank the Secretary of State for that answer and ask him to visit again—so successful was his last visit. When he comes to Leicester, will he come with me to visit a community-based scheme called Business-to-Business, which over the past few years has helped hundreds, if not thousands, of people into work as part of the new deal arrangement? Does he agree that that is the basis of the new deal—enabling people from diverse backgrounds to get into full-time work so that they can help to sustain the wonderful British economy that we have at the moment?

Peter Hain: I acknowledge the important role that Business-to-Business has played, especially in tackling a problem that is close to my right hon. Friend's heart: the difficulties faced by ethnic minority communities, particularly in city and town centres. That remains a big challenge for us and it is one of the outstanding issues that we need to address. I also welcome the fact that Leicester is one of our city strategy pathfinders, tasked with improving local employment rates. I know that my right hon. Friend has been invited to the launch on 19 October.

Ian Davidson: Once the Minister has visited Leicester, will he continue travelling north and visit my constituency, where in the last year to date unemployment has fallen by 16.2 per cent.? That is welcome, but does he agree that it is not good enough and that areas such as mine ought to be made targets for zero unemployment? That is entirely possible in an area such as mine, where the number of jobs coming in is greater than the number of unemployed. However, priority needs to be given to people locally who are unemployed. Will he agree to direct the Department accordingly?

Peter Hain: Yes.

Ian Davidson: Thank you!

Peter Hain: I will certainly see what I can do about my travels. I did not respond directly to the request made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) about visiting Leicester. We will look into the matter. I know that my hon. and learned Friend the Minister for Pensions Reform is due to visit Leicester soon. Perhaps he can accompany my right hon. Friend to a project such as the one he mentioned.
	I was in Scotland a few weeks ago and what struck me was the way in which, over the past 10 years under a Labour Government, the economy has been transformed. There are more jobs than ever before and, in areas including the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, South-West (Mr. Davidson), we are beginning to tackle successfully some of the deep-rooted and deep-seated problems of people who have been on benefits year after year as a result of the Tories' miserable failure throughout the United Kingdom, and especially in Scotland, when they were in government.

Child Poverty

Stewart Jackson: What his latest assessment is of the trends in levels of child poverty.

Caroline Flint: We have succeeded in arresting and reversing a historical upward trend in child poverty, which led to its doubling under successive Conservative Governments. Since 1997, Government policies have lifted 600,000 children out of relative poverty, with fewer children living in workless households and increases in lone parent employment.

Stewart Jackson: In his plagiarised speech at the Labour conference, the Prime Minister said that the
	"goal for this generation is to abolish child poverty".
	How does the Minister reconcile those remarks with the fact that, according to figures from March this year, the number of children in poverty has risen by 200,000 to 3.8 million, after 10 years of a Labour Government? We still have the highest number of children living in workless households in the whole of Europe. What about rhetoric and reality?

Caroline Flint: One thing that is for sure is that in 1997 we had the worst record in Europe, and today, although there is more to be done, we are recognised as having the greatest improvement of any European Union country. Since 1997, over 2 million more people are in work, and unemployment is close to its lowest levels since 1975. Of course we have to do more, but the difference between today and 1997, when we came to power, is that then there had been 20 years of an increasing trend of child poverty. That trend upwards has been halted. We do not believe that the latest figures represent a trend in the wrong direction, but our Green Paper asks important questions: what more can we do to provide work for those who currently do not have it, and to make work pay?

Kali Mountford: Is not persistent inter-generational worklessness at the heart of the problem? What more can be done to ensure that people who stay out of work continually, from one generation to another, and who have that as the norm, can be signposted, so that we make sure that they take part in this new generation of work and do not stay out of society?

Caroline Flint: My hon. Friend makes an important point. The saddest thing to hear from staff working in our jobcentres is that they are dealing with the son of someone whom they dealt with 20 years ago. Breaking the cycle of inter-generational unemployment is a huge challenge, and there are no quick-fix solutions. Our ambition must be that when children look out of the window of a morning, they see a community on its way to work. We have to make sure that we provide the means, the resources and the expectations if that is to happen.

Robert Goodwill: As we currently measure relative poverty, the only way to reduce child poverty is to increase pensioner poverty, and vice versa. Has the Minister looked at more realistic ways of measuring actual poverty, so that we can have a more sensible debate about the subject?

Caroline Flint: We have been successful in reducing both child poverty and pensioner poverty, so we must be doing something right. There is a lot of debate about the different factors that affect poverty. We use relative poverty because globally it is widely regarded as one of the best ways to assess poverty, but we consider other aspects, too. It is important that we do not look at the issue solely in terms of income. Our decent housing programme is contributing to supporting people, so that they live in better homes with lower fuel costs; and our education and skills programmes equip people to take on work that is much more skilled today than it was 20, 30 or 40 years ago—people have to face up to that fact. Of course, the issue is also about making sure that parents understand how important it is to support their children in having aspirations, and we support parents in doing just that.

Stephen Hepburn: I thank the Minister for taking the time to visit my constituency this summer; it was a worthwhile visit. She learned that almost 3,600 children in my constituency live in workless households. That means that about four in 10 young children going to school do not have the experience of a parent in work. Now that she has come up and seen that, may I ask what conclusions she has drawn, and how she plans to tackle the issue?

Caroline Flint: I very much enjoyed my visit to my hon. Friend's constituency. I visited the Sure Start children's centre, where I met women who had been helped by Sure Start and by people who work in jobcentres and who come to the Sure Start centre to provide the information that women need in order to make choices about going into work. One area where we have to work harder is in making the convincing case that people are better off in work. That is one of the issues that I am looking at closely, because I think that people still do not understand what is available to them when they are in work, and what they do not lose by being in work. We have to make that case more strongly and clearly, and I welcome any suggestions on helping us to achieve that.

Danny Alexander: The fact is that child poverty rose in the past year. What is more, according to Save the Children's devastating assessment published last week, child poverty will not be abolished on current trends until 2049—30 years after the Government's deadline. As the Government search for a new vision, will the Minister support policies to increase child benefit and investment in educational opportunities for the poorest children, so that they can escape the circumstances of their parents? I suggest that that could be paid for by scaling back the tax credits paid to middle and high-income families.

Caroline Flint: I think that I have already said that I accept that there was a rise in part of our figures on child poverty this year, but it is important to look at the overall trend rather than just at one year. This involves a challenge, but we are the first Government in this country to set a child poverty target and to challenge the assumptions that have gone before. The child benefit rate will go up to £20 from April 2010, and from April 2009 women will get child benefit from the 29th week of their pregnancy.
	Those are examples of what we have announced this year as part of the 2007 Budget, but there is more that we can do. We have also announced a roll-out of in-work credit for lone parents of £40 across the country and of £60 in London in recognition of the particular costs there. We can be proud of what we have achieved, but we cannot be complacent about the evidence of unemployment in families and in communities that has gone on for too long.

Phyllis Starkey: Six hundred thousand children are living in households whose incomes are too low to pay income tax, but which are still required to pay the full amount of council tax. I know that the Department has said that it will review the thresholds for council tax benefit and income tax. May I ask when?

Caroline Flint: My hon. Friend raised this issue in her Select Committee report, and I understand that we are considering it and will get back to her on it. We have just extended a pilot that was started in the north-east, in which we looked for greater collaboration between our Jobcentre Plus staff, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs and the local authorities, to try to achieve simplification of the way in which people juggle different benefits and in-work and out-of-work credits. I hope that, if that works in the further extension of the pilots, we can seek to develop it elsewhere. In the first pilot, the time taken to sort out the benefits for people was reduced by two thirds. That has a psychological impact on people who are choosing whether to stay on benefit or to work. Making a difference in that kind of process could make the situation a lot better.

Julia Goldsworthy: Will the Minister promise joint action between her Department, the Treasury and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to tackle the high water bills for South West Water customers? Does she accept that, without measures to make water more affordable, her Department will not meet its child poverty targets in that region?

Caroline Flint: I am happy to look into that question on the hon. Lady's behalf. Of course, it is important not only to consider the bills but to conserve water and ensure that we use only what we need and do not overuse it. I will write to the hon. Lady on the issue, if she will bear with me.

Jobcentre Plus (Telecoms Charges)

David Taylor: What recent discussion he has had with Ofcom on the charging policies of telecommunication companies toward the 0845 numbers used by Jobcentre Plus; and if he will make a statement.

Anne McGuire: Jobcentre Plus conducted a review, which was completed in July, which investigated the inbound telephone numbering plan that supports the contact centre and benefit delivery centre operations. During the review, Ofcom's call numbering team was approached on an informal basis for advice on developing the Jobcentre Plus internal numbering strategy, particularly regarding the future tariff structures of the 0845 range.

David Taylor: Some telecoms providers charge higher than normal rates for all 08 numbers, even so-called freephone numbers, which means that some unemployed Jobcentre Plus clients are paying charges that they cannot afford for the advice, information and assistance that they need. Will the Minister tell the House why those people cannot ring a local centre, at lower, local rates? Will she expand the review to which she has referred to include this issue, and reassure us that the Department is not receiving a rake-off from the excess charges generated at the moment?

Anne McGuire: I am aware that some mobile phone companies charge significantly over the basic rate. We have had discussions with them, but their pricing policies are very much a matter for them. I want to give my hon. Friend some comfort, however. Since 1 August, the cost of an 0845 number on BT lines has fallen from 3p to 2p a minute. When someone calls our helpline, we are careful to make them aware how long the call will take, and to ensure that they are aware of the mobile phone charges that can accrue to the call. We then advise them that they can phone back on a land-line if they want to do so. If they cannot do that, our advisers will call them back. That ensures that nobody is disadvantaged because they cannot afford the price of a telephone call.

Andrew Selous: Is the Minister aware that many people trying to claim benefits over the phone either cannot get through or are told that they will be called back even though they do not have a phone? The social fund commissioner's office found that fewer than one in five calls were answered, so will the Minister end the Government's complacency about the effect of the faceless state on people in real difficulties and ensure that those in particular need can either see a Jobcentre Plus official or have an official make the call on their behalf?

Anne McGuire: I appreciate the enthusiasm that the hon. Gentleman brings to his post, but we do of course offer face-to-face interviews with Jobcentre Plus advisers in appropriate circumstances. The hon. Gentleman shakes his head, but I can assure him that that is the case. It is very clear in some application processes that a third person can speak on behalf of the applicant. More than 90 per cent. of calls are answered, but we are aware that we have to continue to review matters in order to ensure that the system is made even better. I take great exception to the hon. Gentleman's comment that this amounts to a "faceless state". We have a whole range of committed and dedicated benefit advisers across the country whose main job and principal occupation and commitment is to ensure that people get the help that they need at the time that they need it.

Gwyneth Dunwoody: The benefit advisers do a very good job, but is it not fairly tacky to use such a system for people to apply for the assistance and help to which they are entitled? Would it not be better simply to ask that no Government Department anywhere in Whitehall continue the growing practice of using 0845 numbers? If people have already paid through their taxes to receive services from Her Majesty's Government that are of a high standard, no impediment should be placed in their way.

Anne McGuire: With the utmost respect, may I say to my hon. Friend that we have discovered that contact centres are generally more convenient for customers to access, because they remove the need personally to go to a local jobcentre. On cost comparisons, I have already said that the cost of a land-line telephone call is 2p a minute. Again, with the greatest respect, I have to say that, in comparison with the cost of a bus or train journey to a local office, contact centres are appropriate for most people. Harking back to my response to the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), we will ensure that where people want an interview and in some instances a face-to-face application process we will deliver that.

Local Employer Partnerships

John Robertson: What mechanisms are in place to assess and audit the adequacy of skills training provided by employers involved in local employer partnerships.

Caroline Flint: Through local employment partnerships, we will be working with employers to enable individuals to get the preparation and training that they need to support their movement into work. In England and Wales, Ofsted and its Welsh equivalent, Estyn, have the responsibility to assess the effectiveness of training contracted and funded by the Government. In Scotland, all Scottish Enterprise national training programmes must conform to Scottish quality management system standards.

John Robertson: I thank my hon. Friend for her answer. I am sure that she will agree with me that the importance of skills and training is utmost in everybody's minds, particularly with the Olympic games and the biggest build programme in Glasgow's history, as well as—hopefully—build for the Commonwealth games and Glasgow's bid. Will she ensure that apprenticeship training is valid and relevant to the jobs that are needed, and that the skills shortage and gap will be taken care of in future?

Caroline Flint: My hon. Friend raises a very important point. It is absolutely key that the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills work together to ensure that the connection between employer and training is strengthened. I was very pleased to visit Portsmouth this summer, where VT Shipbuilding is working with the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions and Jobcentre Plus to produce a fantastic programme. Pre-employment training is provided in the shipyard, ending with an offer of adult traineeships up to a very high standard. Four men who had been out of work for a considerable time got those jobs. I am meeting some of the companies working to build the infrastructure around the Olympic games. I take on board my hon. Friend's point, and I would be happy to talk to him further about what we can achieve in this area.

Child Maintenance

Douglas Carswell: What representations he has received on his proposals for changing child maintenance arrangements over the past three months.

James Plaskitt: Following the formal consultation on the child maintenance White Paper, published in December last year, we published our response document in May. We have continued to meet stakeholders to discuss the reforms to child maintenance. In the past three months, for example, we have met the Child Poverty Action Group, Families Need Fathers and One Parent Families. We continue to work closely with all stakeholders.

Douglas Carswell: What reassurances can the Minister give to the many thousands of families struggling with the current system that the IT used by the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission will work this time around?

James Plaskitt: Those people will not have to wait until CMEC is in operation because we are already engaged in a programme of improving the CSA's IT system. A number of important releases are out already and the system is operating a lot better, which is why, since the operational improvement programme commenced in April 2006, we are getting child maintenance payments to 63,000 more children, and why we can report that the applications backlog is down by 36 per cent. We are clearing new applications faster, partly because of existing IT improvements.

Joan Humble: As well as receiving representations from the various charities involved in this area, has my hon. Friend received representations from the Public and Commercial Services Union, on behalf of the staff who will administer the new system? When I talked to them in Blackpool, they said that they were becoming increasingly anxious about how they will manage the old calculation, the new calculation and the new-new calculation when CMEC is introduced.

James Plaskitt: I can reassure my hon. Friend on that point. We are closely engaged with our staff. I have had a number of meetings with staff representatives over the last year, and I know that other colleagues in the Department have done the same. The staff tell us, overwhelmingly, that they are right behind the Government's reforms, and they welcome the improvements that the operational improvement plan is already achieving. They also welcome some new powers that we have given staff—for example, to collect child maintenance debts.
	Although we are discussing with staff particular issues about transitional arrangements such as those that my hon. Friend mentioned, our staff want to work for an efficient system that delivers more child maintenance to more children; they recognise that the changes we are introducing are set to achieve just that.

Peter Bottomley: Will the Minister please ask Sir Leigh Lewis to pass on to his staff Members' thanks for the detailed work that they have put into the inquiries that we make on behalf of our constituents and our hope that the new systems will work better? Will the Minister also ask the Prime Minister to instruct permanent secretaries to say to Secretaries of State that they do not want to introduce systems that will not work first time around? We should not have to have a running experiment for two years, causing disaster to so many families.

James Plaskitt: I will certainly pass those comments on, and I agree with the hon. Gentleman that this is not an area for experimentation. The CSA has been troubled almost since the day of its inception. We all accept that this is a difficult policy area, and we have taken through reforms that have achieved some improvement, but we all recognised—right across the House, I think—that there was a really tough problem with the agency.
	We decided that, because of their problems, the agency and the system as they currently exist cannot go on. That is why we decided to introduce the new arrangement under the commission, why we are taking time to ensure that we get that right, why we are deliberately taking time over the transitional arrangements to ensure that they are right as well, and why, in the meantime, we are investing additional people and resources to improve the agency's performance. On all counts, it is improving.

Pension Protection

Willie Rennie: If his Department will review the compensation rate for those who lost out when their occupational pension schemes were wound up.

Mike O'Brien: Yes.

Willie Rennie: As the Minister will be aware, more than 120,000 people work for companies that have gone out of business leaving insufficient money in their pension funds. When will he agree that the Government's compensation scheme should be bolstered to ensure that those workers receive the same compensation as is available under the Pension Protection Fund?

Mike O'Brien: The financial assistance scheme assets review is being led by the Government Actuary, Andrew Young, and is considering the better use of the assets currently in failed pension schemes. The Government have indicated that we are prepared at least to match any extra funding that might arise out of the assets review. Further funding is therefore available. The Government have the goal of moving towards a 90 per cent. top-up rate, and we are determined to seek justice for pensioners.

Andrew Miller: I welcome my hon. and learned Friend's comments, especially on behalf of the HH Robertson's pensioners in my constituency, whose scheme, which is covered by the rules, failed in 1996. Many people have now received payments from the scheme, and there have been many letters of thanks. I pay credit to the staff who have dealt with the complicated casework. Will he ensure that complex cases such as bridging pensions are dealt with as a priority before moving on to the kind of detail suggested by the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Willie Rennie), because such pensioners deserve support now?

Mike O'Brien: We are trying to get as much support as possible to pensioners, and I have made changes to the rules in the past month—for example, agreeing that trustees will be able to make payments directly rather than having to go to the financial assistance scheme first. The FAS has now paid out just under £9.1 million to 2,560 qualifying members. A further 868 members will be paid as soon as they have confirmed their personal details, and an additional 814 members have been assessed as eligible for FAS payments when they reach 65.

Graham Stuart: The Conservative party promised last week to refloat the lifeboat and ensure that pensioners receive a payment within three months of a Conservative Government taking office. Does the Minister recognise that the British people feel cheated of the opportunity to vote for an incoming Government who could bring justice to pensioners rather than the injustice that they have suffered under Labour?

Mike O'Brien: Tory fantasy finances will not help those pensioners. Last week, the Conservatives tried to refloat a lifeboat proposal that sank last July following Andrew Young's report. It was sunk not by the Government, but simply by the fact that the cost of increasing the fund to PPF levels, as proposed by the Tories, is £2.7 billion in cash terms over 50 years. The Tories have not shown how they can provide that money, and fantasy finances will help no one. There are two realistic ways of providing finances: one is better use of assets in the failed schemes; the other is through the taxpayer. We are awaiting further information from Andrew Young on how we can better use those assets, and we have indicated that we will provide Government funding. That is the realistic way of getting justice for pensioners. The proposals that the Tories have made will achieve nothing: they are pure fantasy.

Nigel Waterson: Why does the Minister show passion only when he says no to pension victims? Why cannot he have the courage of his convictions and follow what the Conservative party pledged to do if it won the election, but which the Prime Minister bottled out of—get the first payments to victims from a proper lifeboat fund within three months, by 1 February? Why cannot he do the same?

Mike O'Brien: The Conservative party made a proposal that simply does not float. The Government Actuary clearly set out why it is not credible to try to manufacture such funding from something vaguely called unclaimed assets. The Government have offered taxpayers' money and a realistic proposal to bring together the assets of failed pension schemes better to ensure that they can provide for those who need justice. The Tories proposed nothing realistic; it was pure fantasy. This Government are determined to do justice to pensioners, and to do it properly.

Child Maintenance

Rosie Cooper: What changes he plans to make to the system of calculating maintenance payments to reduce avoidance of payments by self-employed non-resident parents; and if he will make a statement.

James Plaskitt: With the compliance rate among self-employed non-resident parents at 59 per cent., it is clearly important to take further measures, which we are doing in the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill. For example, the use of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs information and fixed-term maintenance awards will speed up the process and help to prevent self-employed non-resident parents from providing delayed or misleading information.

Rosie Cooper: As well as accurate assessments, enforcement of the assessments is vital. Every week, I see cases where it is obvious that the tax return information and the figures that are submitted to the CSA are quite unrelated. I have spoken to the CSA, which does not use Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs departments as well as it might. What can be done to ensure that people do not use self-employment deliberately to delay or obstruct the enforcement of their child maintenance liability?

James Plaskitt: I thank my hon. Friend for that further point. We have all seen similar cases in our constituency surgeries. That is why we are introducing additional powers in the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill, which is now going through Parliament: first, the power to use gross income information from HMRC, which will give us a more robust and reliable source of information about real income than what some self-employed non-resident parents tell us; secondly, the power to use fixed-term awards; and, thirdly—and importantly for those who are still inclined not to co-operate—powers to deduct money directly from accounts that self-employed people might have with various financial institutions.

Michael Weir: The Minister will be aware, however, that much of the problem arises when someone's lifestyle is obviously at variance with their declared income. He said that we would use HMRC data, but one of the problems is that when there is evidence of a difference between lifestyle and declared income, the CSA often does not properly investigate it. Will the HMRC data be treated as sacrosanct or will CMEC have powers to investigate further when there is evidence that they do not equate with the lifestyle of the person involved?

James Plaskitt: The hon. Gentleman identifies a correct point. One of the problems was that the CSA was, in a sense, originally designed and set up to be an investigatory agency, but was never given the powers to be one. The difference with the new commission is that it will have the right to access HMRC data, which are far more reliable on real income levels than the evidence that self-employed non-resident parents submit to the agency. With the use of HMRC data and the other steps we are taking, especially the power to have direct access to finance accounts, we are confident that we can certainly make it far more difficult for self-employed non-resident parents to evade their responsibility to maintain their children.

Kevan Jones: What would the Minister say to the gentleman—I will call him Mr. X—who came to my surgery on Saturday, a self-employed individual who has supplied all his information to the CSA, which has lost his file on two separate occasions? He has asked for a statement of what he has paid and how the calculation has been made, only to be told that that information is not available to him or his solicitor. He is now being taken to court, on Friday, by a debt collection agency. I rang the MP hotline this morning, only to be told that I would have to put the case in writing to the CSA, which would have to contact the debt collection agency, which would then write back—a process taking four weeks. Does not the system cut MPs out of the loop? Should it not be a bit more responsive to the situation in which my constituent has found himself?

James Plaskitt: My hon. Friend highlights an extremely complex case, of which there are still a fair number in the system. The length of time that it is taking to resolve the case that he outlined is, of course, not satisfactory. I should be more than happy to meet him urgently, to see whether I can make any intervention that might speed matters up.

Long-term Benefits

Nadine Dorries: What steps his Department is taking to ensure that there are jobs available for those leaving long-term benefits.

Peter Hain: There are currently around 650,000 unfilled vacancies across the economy. Jobcentre Plus alone takes over 10,000 new vacancies every working day, and at least as many again come up through other recruitment channels. However, we are redoubling our efforts to help jobless people by rapidly expanding local employment partnerships, to help 250,000 people from the most disadvantaged groups into work over the next three years.

Nadine Dorries: Will the Secretary of State implement any of the proposals outlined in David Freud's report "Reducing dependency, increasing opportunity", which the Government commissioned? Has he discussed the report with the Prime Minister? If the recommendations are not to be implemented, will he tell us why not?

Peter Hain: I have indeed discussed the report with the Prime Minister, and I have also discussed it with David Freud. Most of it has been accepted in our Green Paper. It makes an important contribution to ensuring that there are serious reductions in the number of people on long-term benefits and people who are not in the jobs market or even in job-focused benefit environments. I will not, however, follow the Tory path, which I assume the hon. Lady supports, of unfunded, uncosted programmes that will leave an enormous black hole in public finances, and which omit to point out that it is necessary to spend to save. That is what worried me about some of the announcements at the Tory party conference last week.

LEADER OF THE HOUSE

The Leader of the House was asked—

Parliamentary Questions

Mark Harper: How many and what percentage of questions tabled for answer on the three September answer days received a substantive answer on the due day.

Harriet Harman: Written questions were tabled, under the new arrangements for September questions, by 136 hon. Members. Fifty-nine per cent. were answered on the specified answering day, with a further 24 per cent. answered subsequently in September. That amounts to 83 per cent. of questions answered in September.

Mark Harper: That woeful performance—40 per cent. of questions not answered on the day on which answers were due—shows that the Government are failing to provide the answers that the country needs in a range of policy areas. That, no doubt, is why the Prime Minister was frightened to go to the country to receive the answer to the question that we all want to ask.

Harriet Harman: The hon. Gentleman may not be aware that under the last Government no questions were answered in September, although hon. Members could table them. This is a new procedure. More Members have asked questions on September question days than did so last year. The time taken to answer them, on average, is about the same as the time taken on non-September sitting days. Obviously, we all want all questions to be answered as quickly as possible.

David Kidney: Only in Parliament, during September, was there no debate about an early election. Only in Parliament was there no debate about an international credit crunch, a run on a bank in Britain, foot and mouth disease for the second time, the bluetongue virus and the speculation about when we should call the election. Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that written answers are not a suitable alternative to substantive debate about the big issues of the day, and that Parliament should sit in September?

Harriet Harman: The House did sit in September for two years as an experiment. My hon. Friend will know that on 1 November last year, in a free vote, the House decided not to continue September sittings. He will probably also know that the Modernisation Committee is to consider whether the arrangements for recall of Parliament are sufficiently accessible to Members.

Simon Hughes: Does the Leader of the House accept that while of course it is helpful to be able to table written questions during a recess, it would be even more helpful if Prime Ministers and other Ministers made major statements to Parliament, rather than to the country from abroad, when a few days later they could be accountable here?

Harriet Harman: If the House is not sitting and Ministers need to give out information, they have no option but to give it out publicly and not to this House. When the House is sitting, we very much take the view that information should be given to Parliament first.

HOUSE OF COMMONS COMMISSION

The hon. Member for North Devon, representing the House of Commons Commission, was asked—

Bottled Water

John Spellar: How much bottled water was (a) sold and (b) provided within the House in the most recent year for which figures are available.

Nick Harvey: A total of 105,957 litres of bottled water was sold by the House of Commons Refreshment Department in 2006-07. In the same year, 16,200 litres of bottled water were supplied to the Department of the Serjeant at Arms for use in Committee Rooms, and 34,000 litres of bottled water were provided mainly in water coolers to staff of the House.

John Spellar: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that answer, but is it not time, when we are looking at environmental change and the enormous environmental costs of bottled water, that the House of Commons stopped preaching to the rest of the country and started to reduce its use of bottled water, to use tap water and to stop all the waste of the empty bottles, too?

Nick Harvey: I have a lot of sympathy with what the right hon. Gentleman says. Of course, in the restaurants and bars of the House, this is a matter of choice for the individual consumer. Tap water is available free of charge in all Refreshment Department outlets. In March, the Administration Committee studied the issue of Committees using water and concluded that logistical constraints, health and safety issues and staffing costs meant that there was quite a complex issue to be considered. If he wishes to look at that report and to make further suggestions, I assure him that it need not necessarily be viewed as the last word on the matter.

Peter Bottomley: Would it not be a good idea, if we have to have bottles, to have them refilled from the tap in the House rather than their being carried from one part of the country to another?

Nick Harvey: As I say, I have a lot of sympathy with that proposition. That was exactly what the Administration Committee looked at. If the hon. Gentleman wishes to make further proposals to the Committee, I am sure that it will be pleased to listen to them.

LEADER OF THE HOUSE

The Leader of the House was asked—

European Scrutiny Procedures

David Heathcoat-Amory: What recent proposals she has made for the reform of European scrutiny procedures.

Helen Goodman: The Government are well aware that there is dissatisfaction in many quarters about the scrutiny of European measures in this House. In its 2005 report, the Modernisation Committee identified the need to look at how to reinvigorate the work of the European Standing Committees. We are continuing to examine possible ways forward, and the Government expect to make proposals in due course.

David Heathcoat-Amory: That will not do. It was two and a half years ago that the Modernisation Committee brought out that report, chaired by the then Leader of the House, now the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. Since then, absolutely nothing has been done. The report referred to
	"worrying shortcomings in the House's scrutiny of EU business".
	More than 1,000 new measures are being proposed every year, and only a tiny fraction is scrutinised or debated properly. Rather than talk about the powers and rights of this House, will the Government do something about them and make some proposals?

Helen Goodman: The right hon. Gentleman is an experienced member of the European Scrutiny Committee. As such, he must know that it is very important that we get the proposals and any changes right. As with the management of all business before the House, it is partly a matter of balancing resources, including Members' time. The Government are well aware of the concerns and continue to give the matter proper attention.

Michael Connarty: I echo the sentiments that were expressed by the right hon. Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory), who is a very active member of my Committee. The arrangements were that, if any European business was referred by our Committee, so that its merits could be considered, it would go to the Standing Committees of the House, three of which were established with fixed memberships and agendas. One of the great problems that face Parliament is that, for two Sessions now, Sessional Orders have turned that scrutiny process into nothing but another kind of statutory instrument process. May I have an assurance that Sessional Orders will not be laid this year and that Committees with agendas and fixed memberships will be re-established to give some decent scrutiny to European business?

Helen Goodman: My hon. Friend is a most diligent Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee. I pay tribute to him for the work that he has done in that role. The difficulties to which he refers relate to the difficulties in finding Members who are prepared to serve on the Standing Committees as they are currently structured. That is why the Government are looking more widely at structural reforms.

Shailesh Vara: The Prime Minister has said that he wishes to make Parliament the crucible of public life and that he wants open government, but the European Scrutiny Committee continues to meet in private. Will the Deputy Leader of the House commit to opening up this Committee, or is she going to bottle it, just like the Prime Minister?

Helen Goodman: The hon. Gentleman is right: as with many Select Committees, some sittings of the European Scrutiny Committee are held in private. When discussions have been held about making all sessions open to the public, the votes have proved contradictory. The issue is extremely controversial but the point is well understood.

Iraq

Gordon Brown: With permission, Mr. Speaker, I want to make a statement to set out detailed proposals for political reconciliation and economic reconstruction in Iraq, for the security of the Iraqi people, for the future configuration, new equipment and security of our own armed forces, and about the obligations that we owe to the local Iraqi staff who have supported us in our efforts.
	I start as the whole House would want me to, by paying tribute to the seven members of our armed forces who, since July, have lost their lives in action in Iraq: Corporal Stephen Edwards, Private Craig Barber, Leading Aircraftman Martin Beard, Lance Sergeant Christopher Casey, Lance Corporal Kirk Redpath and Sergeants Mark Stansfield and Eddie Collins. I want to pay tribute also to the 18 who have died in Afghanistan: Lance Corporal Alex Hawkins, Guardsman David Atherton, Sergeant Barry Keen, Lance Corporal Michael Jones, Captain David Hicks, Privates Tony Rawson, Aaron McClure, Robert Foster, John Trumble, Damian Wright, Ben Ford, Johan Botha and Brian Tunnicliffe, Senior Aircraftman Christopher Bridge, Sergeant Craig Brelsford, Corporal Ivano Violino, Colour Sergeant Phillip Newman and Major Alexis Roberts.
	They died doing vital work in the service of our country. We owe them, and others who have lost their lives, a deep debt of gratitude. They will never be forgotten. I also want to send our wholehearted sympathy to the families of those who have fallen, and to the injured and their families.
	Our strategy in Iraq as a Government has been first, political reconciliation, to work to bring together the political groupings in Basra and across Iraq; secondly, security, to ensure that the security of the Iraqi people and the new Iraqi democracy is properly safeguarded, as well as the security of our own armed forces; and thirdly, economic reconstruction, to work for an economy in Iraq where people have a stake in the future.
	Our strategy is founded on the UN mandate renewed last November in UN Security Council resolution 1723. Whatever disagreements there have been with our decision to go to war, there can be little disagreement about the unanimous UN position affirming the right of the Iraqi people freely to determine their own political future, calling upon
	"the International Community, particularly countries in the region and Iraq's neighbours, to support the Iraqi people in their pursuit of peace, stability, security, democracy and prosperity".
	Let me affirm, as I told Prime Minister Maliki last week, and as I have agreed with President Bush and our other allies, that we will meet our obligations, honour our commitments and discharge our duties to the international community and to the people of Iraq.
	The future depends first of all upon sustained progress on political reconciliation. That is why, when I met Prime Minister Maliki and Vice-President Hashemi in Baghdad last week, I said that it was vital—they agreed—that the three plus one leadership group of the Prime Minister and presidency council meet now to take the political process forward; that key legislation be passed on sharing oil revenues, the constitutional review and provincial elections; that the Government must reach out to disaffected groups, as well as decide on next steps on detainees; and that local elections go ahead in early 2008 making provincial councils more representative. Our message to the Government of Iraq and to the leaders of all Iraqi communities and parties is that they must make the long-term decisions needed to achieve reconciliation.
	The support of Iraq's neighbours—including a commitment to prevent financing and support for militias and insurgent terrorist groups—is also critical to ensuring political reconciliation and security. I urge all nations to implement the international compact to renew Iraq's economy, to participate in the neighbours conferences to boost co-operation and surmount divisions in the region, and to support the enhanced UN mission in Iraq. I renew our call—which I believe will be supported in all quarters of the House—for Iran and Syria to play a far more constructive role by halting their support for terrorists and armed groups operating in Iraq, continuing to improve border security, and arresting and detaining foreign fighters trying to reach Iraq. And we must all act against the presence of al-Qaeda in Iraq. When the people and security forces stand up to al-Qaeda—as in Anbar province, which it had declared to be its base—it can be driven out.
	As I turn to the security situation, I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the steadfastness of our coalition partners who are working with us—there are troops from Denmark, the Czech Republic and Lithuania—and to the continuing Australian and Romanian role. The achievement of a democratic Iraq matters to every civilized nation, and I pay tribute to all 26 nations—led by General Petraeus and the US—that have troops on the ground in Iraq.
	As the Petraeus-Crocker report set out, the security gains made by the multinational forces this year have been significant, and as important as improving current security is building the capacity of the Iraqi forces so they can achieve our aim: that Iraqis step up, and progressively take over, security for themselves. In 2004, it was agreed with the Iraqi Government that in each of the 18 provinces security responsibility would be progressively transferred to Iraqi authorities as and when the conditions were right. Now we are in a position to announce further progress.
	Over the past four years, the UK has helped train over 13,000 Iraqi army troops, including 10,000 now serving with the 10th Division which has been conducting operations in Basra and across the south of the country without any requirement for coalition ground support. As we also tackle corruption, 15,000 police officers are now trained and equipped in southern Iraq. The Iraqi army 14th Division, with about 11,000 men, is in the process of joining them and has already taken on responsibility for Basra city, bringing security force levels in the south to almost 30,000 now and over 35,000 by June next year.
	Since we handed over our base in Basra city in early September, the security situation has been calmer. Indeed, in the last month there have been five indirect fire attacks on Basra air station, compared with 87 in July. Although the four southern provinces have about 20 per cent. of the population, they account for less than 5 per cent of overall violence in Iraq.
	During our engagement in Iraq, we have always made it clear that all our decisions must be made on the basis of the assessments of our military commanders and actual conditions on the ground. As a result of the progress made in southern Iraq, US, UK and Iraqi commanders judged over the last 15 months that three of the four provinces in the UK area of control in southern Iraq were suitable for transition to the Iraqis. They have subsequently been transferred to Iraqi control.
	As part of the process of putting the Iraqi forces in the lead in Basra, we have just gone through a demanding operation which involved consolidating our forces at Basra airport. That was successfully completed, as planned, last month. The next important stage in delivering our strategy to hand over security to the Iraqis is to move from a combat role in the rest of Basra province to overwatch, which will itself have two distinct stages. In the first, the British forces that remain in Iraq will have the following tasks: training and mentoring the Iraqi army and police force; securing supply routes and policing the Iran-Iraq border; and the ability to come to the assistance of the Iraqi security forces when called upon. Then in the spring of next year—and guided as always by the advice of our military commanders—we plan to move to a second stage of overwatch where the coalition would maintain a more limited re-intervention capacity and where the main focus will be on training and mentoring.
	I want now to explain how—after detailed discussions with our military commanders, a meeting of the national security committee, discussions with the Iraqi Government and our allies, and subject, of course, to conditions on the ground—we plan from next spring to reduce force numbers in southern Iraq to a figure of 2,500. The first stage begins now. With the Iraqis already assuming security responsibility, we expect to establish provincial Iraqi control in Basra province in the next two months as announced by the Prime Minister of Iraq; to move to the first stage of overwatch; to reduce numbers in southern Iraq from 5,500 at the start of September to 4,500 immediately after provincial Iraqi control and then to 4,000; and then in the second stage of overwatch from the spring—and guided, as always, by the advice of our military commanders—to reduce to around 2,500 troops, with a further decision about the next phase made then. In both stages of overwatch, around 500 logistics and support personnel will be based outside Iraq but elsewhere in the region. At all times, therefore, we will be achieving our long-term aim of handing over security to the Iraqi armed forces and police, honouring our obligations to the Iraqi people and their security, and ensuring the safety of our forces.
	I would also like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the work of our civilian and locally employed staff in Iraq, many of whom have worked in extremely difficult circumstances, exposing themselves and their families to danger. I am pleased therefore to announce today a new policy which more fully recognises the contribution made by our local Iraqi staff, who work for our armed forces and civilian missions in what we know are uniquely difficult circumstances. Existing staff who have been employed by us for more than 12 months and have completed their work will be able to apply for a package of financial payments to aid resettlement in Iraq or elsewhere in the region, or—in agreed circumstances—for admission to the UK. Professional staff, including interpreters and translators, with a similar length of service who have left our employ since the beginning of 2005 will also be able to apply for assistance. We will make a further written statement on the detail of that scheme this week.
	The purpose of economic reconstruction is to ensure that ordinary Iraqis have a stake in the future. So, as a result of work launched with Prime Minister Maliki in July, the provincial council has created the Basra investment promotion agency and is forming a Basra development fund—$30 million from the Iraqi Finance Minister—to help small business access finance. As announced this morning by the Iraqi Government, we have agreed on the need for a new Basra development commission. It will bring national, regional and international business knowledge together, and provide advice on increasing investment and economic growth. It will host a business leadership conference to strengthen the engagement of the UK private sector in Iraq. It will help the provincial authorities to co-ordinate projects to strengthen Basra's position as an economic hub, including the development of Basra international airport and the renovation of the port.
	I can tell the House that in addition to our support for humanitarian assistance—additional support announced today by the Department for International Development—Deputy Prime Minster Barham Saleh has announced over $300 million for investment in Basra. This will be increased again in 2008, ensuring that the third stage of what we are trying to do—economic reconstruction—can make real progress.
	The safety and security of our armed forces remains our highest priority. The Mastiff patrol vehicle offers the best known protection against mines and roadside bombs. I can announce today that, in addition to the 100 bought and deployed last year in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Ministry of Defence is placing an order for 140 Mastiff patrol vehicles. In recognition of the work of all our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and to help our troops stay in touch with home, we will now provide additional funding from the Reserve to double the number of internet terminals and provide free wireless internet for soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, so that they can e-mail their families from their living quarters.
	I am also convinced after my visit to the region that progress cannot be fully achieved without progress on Israeli-Palestinian issues. A few days ago, we published our proposals for an economic road map to underpin the peace process—a programme for economic and social support for rebuilding the Palestinian economy and the reduction of high levels of poverty among the Palestinian people. The Foreign Secretary and I believe—as I think does the whole international community, including the US, the European Union and the Arab League—that the current dialogue between President Abbas and Prime Minister Olmert offers the best chance of final status negotiations since 2000. The next step is a meeting of the parties and key international players in November, at which we would like to see an agreement that puts the Israelis and Palestinians on a path to real negotiations during 2008, leading to a final settlement of two states living side by side in peace and security. There will be a donors conference in December. The international community will work with Prime Minister Fayyad to strengthen the economy of a future Palestinian state. I welcome Tony Blair's work as the Quartet envoy on this. The UK will continue to support the political process and to provide support for humanitarian assistance and economic development, and I assure the House of my personal commitment to doing all that we can to ensure progress. Working for a successful conclusion to the middle east peace process, taking on al-Qaeda terrorism and ensuring a more secure Iraq are all key to the future stability of the region.
	We have made commitments to the Iraqi people through the United Nations, and we will honour those obligations. We will continue to be actively engaged in Iraqi political and economic development. We will continue to assist the Iraqi Government and their security forces to help build their capabilities so that they can take full responsibility for the security of their own country. It is also important to remember what has brought us to this stage: the determination, professionalism and sacrifice of our armed forces. They have protected the Iraqi people while training their security forces to bring peace to their cities, towns and districts. The scale of their achievement will always be remembered, and we will continue to discharge our duties to them and to the international community.
	I commend the statement to the House.

David Cameron: May I start by welcoming the Prime Minister's statement? I hope that he will agree that statements on our troops should always be made in the House of Commons. I join the Prime Minister in paying tribute to the 25 servicemen who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan since we last met. We owe them and their families a huge debt for their professionalism, courage and sacrifice.
	The whole country will welcome the fact that more of our troops are coming home, and no one will be more relieved than the families of the troops concerned. Could the Prime Minister clarify one point in that regard? He spoke about 500 logistic staff who will be based outside Iraq. Can he confirm that they will be moved from Iraq, or are some of them already based in neighbouring countries?
	May I also welcome today's announcement about the Iraqi interpreters? People who have risked their lives for Britain should never be let down by Britain.
	In Iraq, our overriding objectives should be to maximise the success of the mission and to minimise the danger to our troops. With that in mind, I wish to ask the Prime Minister about three main issues: the reduction in troop numbers, the goals and the safety of our remaining troops, and the steps being taken towards a political settlement.
	On troop numbers, decisions should clearly depend on the build-up of the Iraqi army and the state of security in southern Iraq. Is the Prime Minister satisfied that the border between Iraq and Iran can be policed effectively, in what is called the second stage of overwatch, without the involvement of British troops? Is the Prime Minister satisfied that the 13,000 Iraqi troops that we have trained in the south are sufficient to maintain the security of southern Iraq?
	That question leads to the second issue: the goals for our remaining troops and their safety. When troop numbers continue to be reduced, there comes a point at which they will lack a critical mass and cannot protect themselves properly. Is the Prime Minister absolutely satisfied that the reductions will not take us past that point? Furthermore, does he think that that is the minimum number necessary for such protection?
	As the Prime Minister has said, Basra air station was subject to attack even before the move out from Basra palace. Is he now satisfied that the protection at Basra air station is adequate?
	One of the purposes of the overwatch role is to deploy the troops again if necessary. So can the Prime Minister tell the House under what criteria such redeployment would take place, who would make that decision, and what size of force is required to make the potential to redeploy credible?
	However much the international community does, there is clearly a limit to what outsiders are able to achieve. It is up to the Iraqi communities themselves to come together and achieve political stability. As anyone who has been to Iraq knows, political progress is painfully slow. The independent Government Accountability report in the United States last month said that just three of the 18 benchmarks that had been set for the Iraqi Government had been met. Will the Prime Minister confirm that no de-Ba'athification law has yet been enacted, and that laws governing the distribution of Iraq's oil revenues have been drafted but have not yet been passed?
	The Prime Minister spoke about neighbours conferences. Does he agree that it is now time for a permanent international contact group, with a permanent secretariat, to ensure co-ordination with Iraq's neighbours on the crucial issues facing the country?
	It is essential that we learn from the mistakes in Iraq and that we do not repeat them in Afghanistan: too little co-ordination, too little political progress and lack of a realistic plan. Now that more troops are coming home, may we have the independent inquiry we need to learn the lessons? The Chief of the Defence Staff said that when it comes to reporting on progress all we get are
	"snapshots...sometimes really good and sometimes really bad".
	Does the Prime Minister accept the need to provide Parliament with full, regular updates on progress in Iraq and Afghanistan, and will he take up our proposal for at least a full quarterly report?
	On reflection does the Prime Minister agree that the way in which he made the announcement about troop withdrawals last week and the way it was briefed to the press were mistakes? He promised to make such announcements to the House of Commons, but he did not. He promised that 1,000 of our troops would be brought back before Christmas, yet is it not the case that 500 had already been announced and 270 were already back in the country?
	I have to say to the Prime Minister that this is of a different order of magnitude from what we have had from him over the past decade. This is not double counting of Government spending. This is not just spinning the good bits of a Budget. This is about dealing with people's lives and the families of our brave servicemen, and does he agree that this is not an acceptable way for a Prime Minister to behave?

Gordon Brown: Let me say first where I agree with the right hon. Gentleman. I agree about the tribute that we both paid not only to those who have given their lives but to those who serve our country every day in the most difficult circumstances in Iraq.
	I agree with the right hon. Gentleman, too, about the slow pace of political reconciliation in Iraq. It was precisely for that reason that I wanted to impress on Prime Minister Maliki the need for progress in bringing all the parties together and on the de-Ba'athification law, the distribution of oil revenues and setting up local elections, so that provincial elections, where councils are more representative, can take place. It is precisely for those reasons that I and others have to press Prime Minister Maliki and all the other sectarian groupings so that they can come together to form a Government who can work. We will work hard for political reconciliation.
	The right hon. Gentleman's proposal for a permanent group is covered by a United Nations resolution at the moment. What is likely to happen over the next few months is that there will be a second UN resolution, and of course what happens after that can be part of the discussions with our allies about a UN resolution.
	On troop movements and reconfigurations, let me explain to the House that overwatch is in two phases. The first stage gives us a re-intervention capacity and the capacity to operate supply lines and to look at the border issues that the right hon. Gentleman raised. It also gives us the capacity to train and mentor Iraqi forces. That is the position in three of the four provinces and we are likely to be in that position within two months in Basra province, which means that we shall be in a position to support Iraqi troops and also to re-intervene.
	The next stage of overwatch can be entered only when we are satisfied that the security situation on the ground has improved. That is why we put so much emphasis on getting 30,000 security and police forces into Iraq, and it will be only when we decide, with military advice on the ground, that it is possible to move to the next stage that the main role of our troops will be training and support.
	Of course, issues related to the Iraq-Iran border will be taken care of in that part of our work and we will also have to look carefully at whether there is a re-intervention capability in the spring, but the main work of our troops is what we have been aiming to achieve for years—to train Iraqi forces so that they can do the job for themselves. As far as the numbers are concerned— [ Interruption. ]—I am coming to exactly that point: 5,500 troops at the beginning of September, 4,500 immediately after provisional Iraqi control is declared, then down to 4,000 and then 2,500. That was not the announcement I made in Iraq last week. The announcement I made in Iraq last week was about what would happen in the next few weeks. This is the long-term strategy for overwatch— [ Interruption ] —which means that the number of troops falls from 5,500 to 2,500. An additional 500 troops will be outside Iraq—it would not be helpful to say where for security reasons—in the region, supporting the efforts of our troops in Iraq.
	I make no apology for visiting our troops in Iraq. I would have been criticised if I had come to the House without visiting our troops in Iraq. I make no apology for spending time talking to the Iraqi Government, the Prime Minister, the Vice-President, the Economic Ministers and the military commanders on the ground. If we are to have responsible politics in this country— [ Interruption ] —Ministers who hold responsibility for the safety and security of our armed forces must visit them, listen to what they say, draw on their advice and then make the decision, which is what I am announcing today.

Menzies Campbell: The Prime Minister began with a tribute to those who have died and been injured. Let me, on behalf of my right hon. and hon. Friends, associate myself with that tribute. Let me, too, as he did, salute the professionalism and bravery of our armed forces—something that is too often taken for granted. The truth is, though, that they were given an impossible task in Iraq. Who now in the Government takes the blame for what the Chief of the Defence Staff called the "false and inflated expectations" of what they could achieve in Iraq?
	Obviously, we welcome the Government's change of heart in relation to interpreters and other civilians, but we are entitled to ask why it has taken so long and precisely how generous the terms will be. What is the Government's estimate of the number of people who will be entitled to take advantage of that change of policy?
	The Prime Minister has mentioned the target of 2,500 by next spring, but that is well below the figure that is thought appropriate for force protection. That has certainly been said by Ministers in recent times. In addition, from what the Prime Minister says, at 2,500, he does not anticipate any intervention taking place. If that is so, the question that immediately arises is what purpose will those troops serve.
	The harsh truth is that Britain's involvement in Iraq has been a catastrophe. We have paid dearly in lives, resources and reputation. Is it not time to acknowledge that the presence of British troops in Iraq no longer serves any realistic military or political purpose. Is it not time, too, to acknowledge that, after four and a half years, Britain has more than fulfilled any moral obligation to the people of Iraq and that our obligation now is to our young men and women in our armed forces? Is it not time to acknowledge that the deployment in Iraq, where little more can be done, is prejudicial to our efforts in Afghanistan, where success is still possible? Is it not time now to set a framework and a programme for the complete withdrawal of all our forces from Iraq?

Gordon Brown: I agree with the right hon. and learned Gentleman about our obligations to our armed forces—I am pleased that he said that both at the beginning and the end of his remarks—but we also have obligations to the international community, and I would have thought that the Liberal party, with its Gladstonian inheritance, would recognise the obligations that we have internationally, particularly in relation to UN resolutions that have been passed, calling on us to support the democracy of the Iraqi people.
	On the specific questions about interpreters, let me give the House the information. There are probably 200 who would immediately qualify as past staff members. There are 250 who are staff members at the moment. There may be others who will join that list once they have done a year's service. We will discharge our obligations that they will either gain help to go to a country of their choice or be able, in agreed circumstances, to come to the United Kingdom. We will provide the support that is necessary for that to happen.
	On the right hon. and learned Gentleman's argument about force protection, I am acting—as are the Government—on military advice when I give the figures that I have given to the House today. If we are to move to the second stage of overwatch, which is primarily a role in respect of which we are giving training and support to the Iraqi security forces to operate in Basra with the police and armed forces themselves, then the figure that we have decided in consultation with our allies, and after taking military advice, is the figure of 2,500 that I am able to give the right hon. and learned Gentleman. That figure will be reached in spring next year, subject to military advice; then we will look again at the situation. But I want to dispel any suggestion that he makes that that number is insufficient for the force protection that we are talking about. The decisions that we make are made on military advice.
	Sometimes, the right hon. and learned Gentleman criticises us for having too few forces; he then criticises us for having too many. The correct position is this: we owe obligations under the United Nations to the Iraqi community. We will discharge our obligations. The Iraqis will take responsibility for their own security, and we will support them in doing so. Despite our disagreements about the decision to go to war, I hope that he will support us in the support that we give to the Iraqi people.

Frank Dobson: As one of the 139 Labour MPs who both spoke and voted against the invasion of Iraq, may I ask my right hon. Friend to bear in mind, when faced with carping criticism from the Tory party, that it was enthusiastically and overwhelmingly in favour of the invasion and never raised any quibbles at the time?
	I also ask my right hon. Friend to bear in mind that everybody in this country welcomes the reductions that he announced last week and the further proposed reductions, and would welcome the announcement as soon as possible of the total withdrawal of British troops—wherever, however, and in whatever circumstances he decides to announce it.

Gordon Brown: We will discharge our obligations to the Iraqi people; I have to say to my right hon. Friend that that means that there will be no artificial timetable now for the final withdrawal of troops from Iraq. We will discharge our obligations during the two phases, but we will continue to review the numbers necessary to do so. I say to other parties in the House that if they have questions about the security situation at Basra airport, I shall be happy to offer them a briefing, on Privy Council terms, with our armed forces about both the numbers required and the jobs that will be done over the next few months.
	I have to say to my right hon. Friend that there will be no artificial timetable. We shall continue to report to the House on what is necessary to discharge our obligations.

James Arbuthnot: The Prime Minister will forgive me, but I do not think that we heard an answer to the question, posed by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, about whether 270 of the troops whose withdrawal the Prime Minister announced last week had already returned home. Is that true?

Gordon Brown: I said that the figure on 1 September was 5,500 troops. It is now falling, after provincial Iraqi control, to 4,500. It then falls to 4,000, and then it will fall to 2,500. The idea that we are not reducing the numbers is completely— [Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. I want hon. Members to allow the Prime Minister to speak.

Adam Ingram: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that we were militarily engaged in Bosnia for 15 years, in Northern Ireland for 38 years and that we are still involved in Kosovo after eight years? Does he agree that after four difficult years in Iraq, we now have measurable and quantifiable success—not failure, as some people are trying to talk up?

Gordon Brown: I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend for what he did as Minister for the armed forces. We appreciate his work in meeting and discharging his responsibilities to our forces. I have nothing but praise for our armed forces, because the work that they have had to do is not simply in Iraq, but in Afghanistan, Kosovo, Ireland and the Falkland Islands. The work that has been done by our armed forces, at every stage, has been magnificent. It shows a professionalism, a commitment to duty and great courage. We are very proud of them.

Malcolm Rifkind: The Prime Minister seeks to equate himself with Mr. Gladstone— [ Interruption. ]

Mr. Speaker: Order. Let the right hon. and learned Gentleman speak.

Malcolm Rifkind: Is the— [ Interruption. ]

Mr. Speaker: Order. Sir Malcolm Rifkind.

Malcolm Rifkind: Is the Prime Minister aware that it was said of Mr. Gladstone that he could convince most people of most things and himself of almost anything? As the Prime Minister was the second most powerful member of Tony Blair's Government and one of the few people who could have stopped this country going to war, and as the result of not doing so there are more than 100,000 Iraqis dead and more than 2 million have fled their country, will he now accept his share of personal responsibility for what has been the greatest error in British foreign policy in recent times?

Gordon Brown: What I would say to the right hon. and learned Gentleman is that we are building a democracy in Iraq, free of Saddam Hussein. We are engaged now in political reconciliation and economic reconstruction. The situation I saw on the ground in Basra was one of a reduction in violence that makes it possible for provincial elections to be held and for economic reconstruction to yield results. I would hope that even if he disagreed with us on the decision to go to war, he would agree with us now that we must combine the political reconciliation we are pushing for, the economic reconstruction that we are financing and the security measures that I have announced to make it possible for the Iraqi democracy to play its full part in the region and the world.

David Winnick: Unlike some, I have never tried to hide the fact that I supported the measures that led to the destruction of the Saddam tyranny, and I am not in the process of apologising. However, does my right hon. Friend accept that it was never the intention that British troops in Iraq should stay indefinitely and therefore that there will be much welcome for a continued policy of the troops leaving Iraq at the most appropriate time?

Gordon Brown: The numbers that I have announced today make it clear that there were 45,000 UK troops at the time that Saddam Hussein fell and there will be 2,500 troops, subject to military advice, in the spring. That is a very substantial reduction in the numbers, but it is possible only because the Iraqis are now able to take responsibility for security themselves. I cannot emphasise enough that 30,000 people in the Iraqi security forces are being trained up in the police and the armed forces in the region. It is because there are 30,000 Iraqi security forces personnel in the southern parts of Iraq that it is possible for us to reduce our troop numbers. But I will not give my hon. Friend an artificial timetable that suggests that we can leave Iraq overnight. We will review the situation and discharge our responsibilities to the Iraqi people

Elfyn Llwyd: On behalf of Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National party, may I add my condolences to those previously expressed in the Chamber?
	The latest invitee into the Prime Minister's big tent—one Alan Greenspan—recently said that he thought that the Iraq war was all about oil. When the Prime Minister discusses economics with Mr. Greenspan, will he discuss his opinion of the reason for the war in Iraq? Can the Prime Minister give a reasonable and reliable figure for the likely number of ex-Ministry of Defence Iraqi employees who might come to Britain to seek asylum in due course? Finally, the Prime Minister has frantically been trying to row away from the Blair project and the Blair war—frantically rowing away from the Blair mother ship, as it were. Will he really make a difference, and show why he is so different, by apologising to the British people for this debacle?

Gordon Brown: I am grateful for what the hon. Gentleman said at the beginning and for his condolences in relation to those who have died in Iraq. I know that the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Welsh are in Iraq at the moment. I think that I told the House the numbers of interpreters and other staff who would qualify under the scheme we have announced today. There are 200 who have already completed their work and 250 or so in situ. There are others who may qualify once they complete their work with us over a period of a year or more. Those are the kind of figures involved. They will either be people who will go to another country, with support from us, or, in agreed circumstances, come to the United Kingdom. Those are the figures that we are able to give at the moment. As far as the war itself is concerned, let us not forget the evil that Saddam Hussein did. Let us not forget also that we are building a democracy in Iraq. I can disagree with Dr. Greenspan as well. Our contribution must be to sustain a democracy in Iraq.

Doug Henderson: May I say to my right hon. Friend that I am absolutely sure that his innovative proposals for civilian staff in Iraq will be much welcomed, not only in the House but by the military, who recognise the vital importance of having good links with local staff, in this intervention and perhaps in others? I have a constituent who was involved in international protection for an international statesman who was visiting Iraq, and his life was saved by two local Iraqi security men. Are they the kind of staff whom my right hon. Friend envisages might be given access to the United Kingdom, as my constituent has requested?

Gordon Brown: The persons I am talking about are mainly interpreters and translators who have worked for the British forces in Iraq—our direct employees, some of whom have finished their work but are vulnerable to attack, and some of whom are still working with us but do not meet the year's qualification, although they may do so at a later date. Those are the men and women who would qualify for the proposals that we are putting forward today.

Kenneth Clarke: Does the Prime Minister not accept that it is becoming almost impossible to see how the cause of democracy and development in Iraq can be served by the continuing presence of British troops? It is almost impossible to see how a rapidly reducing number can play any worthwhile part in overwatch, given the disorder in southern Iraq, and it is quite inconceivable that the Prime Minister will ever come to the House to suggest re-intervention, with a surge of troops or whatever, at any stage after today's statement. If the statement is intended as political cover for removing the troops from Iraq as quickly as possible, will he give an undertaking that the only consideration will be the safety and reputation of British forces, not domestic political pressures, either here or in the United States?

Gordon Brown: If the right hon. and learned Gentleman says that the British forces are serving no purpose, that is not the view of the Iraqi Government. The Iraqi Government want our support, and not only with respect to the supply routes that we manage at the moment and the re-intervention capability that we have. They want our support to train and mentor the Iraqi troops. We had a responsibility, which we are discharging, to train up 15,000 Iraqi armed forces, and we are helping with the training of Iraqi police. I met many of the people who have come from the United Kingdom simply to train those forces when I was in Basra last week.
	I do not agree with the right hon. and learned Gentleman that there is no purpose served by our presence. What our presence is designed to do is to make it possible for the Iraqis to take over security of their own country. I say this to him: look at the reduction in violence in Basra; look at the attempts that we can now make on economic reconstruction to give people a stake in the peace; look at the progress that has been made over these last few months. If that progress can continue, the Iraqis will not only be in a position to have their security forces in place to take over from ours, but will build, through local provincial elections, a local democracy that is capable of making decisions, based not on violence, but on people coming together to decide what is the common good. I am far from agreeing with the right hon. and learned Gentleman that our forces serve no purpose; our forces are doing an important job—an important job that will end up, I accept, as simply one of training and mentoring the forces of Iraq.

Jeremy Corbyn: Does the Prime Minister accept that well over 500,000 Iraqi civilians have lost their lives since the invasion started, and that more than 2 million Iraqis have been forced into exile in neighbouring countries, or into internal exile in Iraq? What support is being given to them? What support is being offered to Syria and Jordan, so that they can look after those people? If the Prime Minister is proposing that employees of the British armed forces be allowed to enter this country as a place of safety, is he also prepared to say that those Iraqis who have sought asylum in this country will not now be deported to Iraq?

Gordon Brown: First of all, I do not accept my hon. Friend's figures. Secondly, the position of those who have served our armed forces, and put themselves at huge risk to do so while in the employment of our armed forces, is one that we ought to safeguard. Under the measures that I announced today, they will be able to apply for help outside Britain and will be able, in certain circumstances, either to go to another country with support from us, or to come to Britain. I accept that there are large numbers of Iraqis now outside Iraq, but one of the reasons why they are outside Iraq is that they need the security of a safe Iraq to come back to, and it is precisely for those reasons that we are building up the security forces of the Iraqis.
	I think that it is often misunderstood that over the last year there has been a dramatic increase in the number of Iraqi security forces—both the armed forces and police—capable of managing their own security, and when the transfer of three provinces took place, it worked in a way that has been relatively calm. We believe that when we move to overwatch in Basra, there is a very good chance that we will have calmness as well, but we will work towards that, aiding the Iraqi security forces.

Charles Kennedy: Can the Prime Minister confirm his response to the question—which he will well recall—that I repeatedly asked of his predecessor in office, in those long months in the build-up to the war, and which he never answered? I asked whether there could or would be circumstances in which the Americans would go in without the benefit of the backing of a second United Nations resolution and the British would not. Is not the sad fact of the matter, as we all now know, that there were never circumstances in which an American intervention would not be accompanied by British back-up? As the principal bankroller of that Government policy over those years, does the right hon. Gentleman accept that that underlies all the difficulties that he is talking about this afternoon, and that it is our very presence in Iraq that is now the problem? Is it not an impossible wish, following a weekend in which he has been talking a lot about vision, for there to be a vision for a political settlement in Iraq because of the very circumstances to which our presence has contributed?

Gordon Brown: I disagree with the right hon. Gentleman entirely. We tried very hard for a second UN resolution. We worked very hard to achieve it, and unfortunately did not. Intervention in Iraq is now covered by a UN resolution. He should accept that the UN resolution is about our presence supporting the security, democracy and prosperity of the Iraqi people and, in my view, there will be a further UN resolution in the next few months. Instead of arguing about the causes, perhaps we could come together to support the democracy of the Iraqi people and to ensure that they have the security to run their own affairs and the economic reconstruction necessary for a stake in their future. I believe that that should be common ground among all of us in the House.

Don Touhig: I believe that the men and women of the British armed forces, their families and the British people will welcome my right hon. Friend's statement today. Is it not a fact that we are able to withdraw troops from Basra because of the success and professionalism of the British armed forces? Does my right hon. Friend agree that hon. Members on both sides of the House should be celebrating this announcement, rather than seeking to engage in party political posturing from the comfort of these Benches while the men and women of our armed forces are putting their lives on the line?

Gordon Brown: I agree with my right hon. Friend and I thank him for the work that he did as defence Minister and as veterans Minister. Over time, people will come to realise that the draw-down of British troops in Iraq is possible because the security situation has improved, and it is only because we have those 30,000 security forces being trained up that it is possible to make this announcement today. Over the past month, we have proved that, as a result of the transfer from Basra palace to Basra airport, the security situation in Basra has improved, and I hope that there will be a general acknowledgement that, as the security potential of the Iraqi forces improves, it will be possible for the numbers of our troops to fall.

Patrick Cormack: As the Prime Minister is taking and listening carefully to military advice, will he assure the House that, as our troops return—whether temporarily or permanently—they are properly welcomed, properly recognised and properly housed?

Gordon Brown: I agree with the hon. Gentleman. This is where we must make progress over the next few years. We have set aside £5 billion over the next 10 years for accommodation for our forces. That money will upgrade the existing single-person accommodation and help young families with someone serving in the forces to buy their own homes. The hon. Gentleman rightly draws attention to the housing situation, and much more needs to be done. That is why we have set aside in the public spending review £5 billion over the next 10 years, and I assure him that the welfare of our troops is our first consideration.

Gisela Stuart: I appreciate the Prime Minister's caution in carefully describing the circumstances under which we will support those who worked for us in Iraq and also the interpreters. However, may I urge him to be generous and positive in the interpretation of those rules so that we do not end up with people feeling that they have been let down by this country?

Gordon Brown: There will be a statement later this week about the details of the scheme. If my hon. Friend has any particular points that she would like to raise, she would be very welcome to talk to Ministers about them. We have to deal with the people for whom we have a direct responsibility—interpreters and translators, people working in the employment of the British armed forces. That is what the scheme is essentially about, but if my hon. Friend has any particular representations to make, we will be happy to listen to them.

Nicholas Soames: I agree with the Prime Minister that valuable work remains to be done for British troops in Iraq, but will he clarify his answer to my right hon. Friend the Leader the Opposition about what reserves will be available to the commander of overwatch troops in the later phases of this operation? Secondly, will he compare and contrast his own slippery manoeuvrings of the last weekend with the courage, steadiness and resolution of British troops on the ground in Iraq?

Gordon Brown: Like the hon. Gentleman, I praise the resolution, determination and courage of our British troops in Iraq. We will talk to our allies in detail about the next stage of overwatch. We have forces outside the border of Iraq as well, but the principal intention of moving to the next stage is to enable us to be the trainers and mentors of the Iraqi security forces who are taking responsibility for problems themselves.

Edward O'Hara: Speaking as one of those who did not support the intervention in Iraq, I nevertheless congratulate the Prime Minister on the responsibility of his statement today. While we are talking about responsibility, does he agree that in respect of our obligations to the Iraqis and the international community, the people who would be let down most if we cut and run prematurely from Iraq would be those very British forces whose courage and professionalism has brought about the achievements that my right hon. Friend described, of which we can be so proud?

Gordon Brown: I met British forces in Basra who are proud of what they have achieved and I am proud of them. I am proud of what they have achieved in defending people in Basra itself, proud of what they have achieved in all the other provinces and also proud that they are training up the Iraqi security forces to do the work themselves. Although my hon. Friend disagreed with me about the origins of the war, I am glad that he has come to the view that it is necessary, in supporting both our troops and the Iraqi people, to take decisions in the measured way that we are doing by setting out the different stages through which we will draw down our forces.

Ann Winterton: I very much welcome the Prime Minister's announcement about the extra 140 Mastiff vehicles, which will be exceptionally welcome to our troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Will he confirm that the cost will be borne by the Treasury and will not come out of the Army budget? In addition, will he ensure that any necessary medium-protected patrol vehicles—they are greatly needed, particularly in Iraq—will be provided and that modern doctrine will be overturned so that those vehicles that are procured will be designed to ensure maximum protection for our troops? I am talking about V-shaped hull vehicles.

Gordon Brown: As the Defence Secretary has pointed out to me, we are looking into those smaller vehicles to which the hon. Lady has drawn our attention, as there are important issues about security and safety. As for her more general question, the £120 million that we are spending is covered by the defence settlement. Where there are urgent requirements, we are prepared to meet them and we have spent several hundred millions in the last few months and years in meeting those requirements of our troops.

Anne Snelgrove: My constituents will very much welcome my right hon. Friend's announcement of troop reductions, but does he agree that that is not only the right policy for this country, but demonstrates that the policy of political reconciliation, economic development and the Iraqi people taking responsibility for their own security is now working?

Gordon Brown: I hope that there will be general recognition in the whole House that, whatever the disagreements on Iraq and whatever the views on the slowness with which economic reconstruction has taken place, there is a unique opportunity now, as the security situation improves in the Basra province, for the work of economic reconstruction to give people a new means by which they can have a stake in the future.
	What I would like to see over these next few months—I think we will see it, if we can bring the parties together—is the security situation improving as, at the same time, we invest in Iraq and in the Basra province, I hope with British businesses involved, as well as businesses from other countries, so that we can end the very high unemployment in that area and make people see that prosperity can go side by side with peace.

Keith Simpson: Was the Prime Minister's statement in Iraq that 1,000 British troops were to be withdrawn agreed with the Secretary of State for Defence and provided by information from him?

Gordon Brown: These are all agreed figures: 5,500 to 4,500 to 4,000 to 2,500. I really do not understand. If we are reducing the number of troops to 2,500, that is a reduction, and that is the reduction that I am announcing today.

Andrew MacKinlay: I do not think that the Prime Minister has answered the point about the border between Iran and Iraq. What assurances can he give about our capacity and that of the coalition forces to impede the bringing in of weapons and destructive explosives, which hit both Iraqis and coalition forces, bearing it in mind that his own Secretary of State for Defence said that so much that has been hurled against British troops in Iraq and in Afghanistan has its provenance—that is the word he used—in Iran? We are too nice to Iran, frankly—too diplomatically nice. I want to hear a more robust response.

Gordon Brown: Let me remind my hon. Friend that in my statement I made it absolutely clear that we call on the Iranians to stop people coming across the border, to stop weapons coming across the border and to stop the support of terrorists who are coming across the border. As for the policing of the border, there has been some success as a result of the work of the coalition troops, and we will continue to see the coalition troops police that border.

Peter Tapsell: May I put again to the Prime Minister the question asked by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind): why did the Prime Minister not support Robin Cook from the start, when he opposed the atrociously foolish policy of invading and occupying Iraq, from which the Prime Minister is now struggling to extricate us, almost certainly leaving chaos behind?

Gordon Brown: We now have a democracy in Iraq, which we did not have before. We have the people of Iraq voting for a new constitution and in elections for representatives. I think that the task ahead—I hope the hon. Gentleman agrees with it, despite our disagreements on the war—is to support that democracy, to enable it to take over its own security, to build political reconciliation in that country and to have an economy that gives people a stake in its future. If that were the case, it would make a huge and significant difference to what happens in the rest of the middle east and the Arab states.

Colin Challen: As we withdraw our troops from Iraq—I look forward to the complete withdrawal of all our troops—can we invest more in rebuilding Iraq and attracting back the many hundreds of thousands of professionals who have become part of the Iraqi diaspora, namely, the engineers, the teachers and others who are desperately needed to rebuild that benighted country?

Gordon Brown: It was precisely those matters that I was discussing last week with the Economic Ministers in Iraq—how, through encouraging new investment in the infrastructure and then through getting business development, particularly in the Basra area, which is potentially very rich, we can attract people back to Iraq and give Iraqi people a stake in the future. I say to my hon. Friend that the next stage, where we will be under test because we have to show that it will work, is to get the economic reconstruction process moving forward and show that we can bring prosperity to that area of the world.

Willie Rennie: When the Defence Committee visited Basra in July, we found that 90 per cent. of attacks were on our forces. Is not the logical position that we should withdraw our troops, as our withdrawal from Basra palace has led to significantly fewer attacks in the area? We are therefore part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Gordon Brown: I have to say that it was before our troops withdrew from Basra palace that the security situation in that area became a great deal calmer. Because we are training up the Iraqi security forces, they are in a position to police and provide security to that area. Far from moving quickly out of Iraq helping the Iraqi security forces, our presence to train and mentor them is an important element in bringing about a calm, or calmer, security situation. On the basis of that calmer security situation, we can build a better future for the Iraqi people.

Linda Gilroy: I welcome the conditions-based approach, about which the Prime Minister has told us, on draw-down of troops, which will hopefully mean many more coming back to communities such as Plymouth. Does he associate himself with the calls made over the summer by General Dannatt and others not only for the Government, families and fellow service people to welcome our armed forces back, but for businesses and communities to do more to mark and recognise their service than they do at present?

Gordon Brown: I thank my hon. Friend for the work that she does in her constituency on exactly that. I want us to recognise the contribution made by our armed forces more than we have done, and to support the families of our armed forces when they are abroad, in combat and in the firing line. I also hope to be able to announce new measures to help those who have been injured fighting for our country with compensation schemes that are more generous than they have been in the past.

Ian Taylor: The Prime Minister mentioned in his statement that the stability of the Iraq that our troops will leave behind depends very much on the behaviour of Iraq's neighbours. Will he update the House on what recent connections, or at least correspondence, there have been with Syria? Will he also comment on the story in the papers that he has entered some agreement with the American President about treatment of Iran if it continues to threaten global stability?

Gordon Brown: There is no truth in that statement attributed to me in the papers at the weekend. As far as Syria is concerned, we continue to press it to play a far more positive role, to end support for terrorists in Lebanon, and to play a constructive role in the middle east peace process. Those matters are common ground on both sides of the House.

Foot and Mouth/Bluetongue

Hilary Benn: With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement on this summer's outbreak of foot and mouth disease and on bluetongue.
	On 3 August, foot and mouth disease was confirmed in Surrey. In line with the contingency plan, control measures, including a national ban on the movement of susceptible animals, were put in place immediately. The following day the strain of virus was confirmed as 01-BFS-67. As this strain was not currently circulating in animals, that pointed to the Pirbright laboratory site as a potential source. I therefore commissioned the Health and Safety Executive to investigate and Professor Brian Spratt to lead a team of experts in a review of biosecurity arrangements. I am today placing in the Library a copy of those two reports, along with all the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs epidemiology reports.
	It cannot be said with complete certainty exactly how the virus escaped from the Pirbright site. The reports concluded, however, that the most likely explanation was accidental release from the drainage system. Whatever the route of escape, it should not have happened and we are determined that it will not happen again. I have accepted all the recommendations in the reports from the HSE and Professor Spratt, and have set up a review of the regulatory framework for handling animal pathogens led by Sir Bill Callaghan.
	A rigorous improvement plan has been developed for the Pirbright site, to be implemented before full operations with live viruses can recommence. A review, led by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, will assess the funding, governance and risk management at the Institute for Animal Health. In addition, a safety alert was issued to all animal pathogen category 3 and 4 laboratories, which will be followed by a round of inspections.
	Epidemiological surveillance indicated that it was highly unlikely that the virus had spread outside the Surrey area. Therefore, given that the surveillance went beyond the EU requirement, that the 30-day minimum time had elapsed and that no further cases had been identified, the protection and surveillance zones were lifted on 8 September. Unfortunately, as we now know, there was undetected infection outside the surveillance zone. On 12 September, foot and mouth disease was confirmed in a third case in Surrey and controls were reimposed. There have now been eight infected premises in total.
	On 25 September, given that the disease was confined to Surrey, we created two foot and mouth disease areas in Great Britain: a temporary risk area in the south-east and a lower-risk area in the rest of the country, where certain movements were permitted under licence. Markets reopened in the low-risk area last Thursday. On a visit to Skipton market, I saw the difference that that will make to the farming industry. The EU has now confirmed that the export of meat can resume from this Friday from Scotland, Wales and the north and south-west of England. We will continue to work with the Commission to increase the areas from which exports can be made.
	Working in partnership with the farming community has been an integral part of our approach to responding to the outbreak. I have listened to the views of the industry about what further steps can be taken to alleviate real economic and welfare pressures. Because the outbreak has arisen from an unusual set of circumstances, I am announcing today a package of assistance for the English livestock sector amounting to £12.5 million. The devolved Administrations are proposing to introduce their own schemes.
	Subject to the EU state aid rules, I intend to make the following available to the farmers most affected: first, £8.5 million of assistance to hill farmers, who have been particularly hard hit. This one-off payment will be paid directly to them, using the system already in place for the hill farm allowance, and will be equivalent to just over 30 per cent. of their 2007 payment. I intend to make available an increase in the level of subsidy for the fallen stock scheme for farmers in the foot and mouth disease risk area, from 10 to 100 per cent. The increase will not only apply to existing members of the scheme, but will be available to all livestock keepers in the risk area. It will apply to stock that has had to be killed on farm for welfare or other reasons. I anticipate the cost to be less than £1 million.
	I also intend to make available an additional contribution of up to £1 million to the Arthur Rank centre for disbursement to farming charities, which focus on providing advice and practical and emotional support to farming families, and £2 million for the promotion and marketing of lamb, beef and pork, both domestically and in our export markets. The public sector is a major purchaser of meat, and I am asking ministerial colleagues to increase the opportunities for small and local producers to tender for its business.
	We are also determined to do as much as possible to reduce the burden of red tape on farmers at this difficult time. Therefore, I have agreed a delay, from 5 January 2008 to the end of April, in enforcing the requirement for livestock hauliers to have a certificate of competence for non-export journeys of more than 65 km. I have agreed to seek a derogation from the Commission for grassland farmers to apply above the annual nitrogen application limit of 170 kg per hectare, which is one of the requirements for farmers in nitrate-vulnerable zones. I have also agreed a one-month extension, until 13 December, to the closing date of the current consultation on the implementation of the nitrates directive.
	I should also point out that Natural England and the Rural Payments Agency are not enforcing certain cross-compliance requirements for agri-environment schemes and the single farm payment where breaches of those requirements are caused directly by restrictions relating to foot and mouth or bluetongue. The Secretary of State for Transport announced last week that to assist movement of the backlog of animals, the rules governing drivers' hours for livestock hauliers would be relaxed for a limited period as markets reopened.
	I also welcome the European Union's decision on 3 October to raise the age at which vertebral column of cattle is considered specified risk material from 24 to 30 months, which will facilitate the sale by butchers of beef from animals in that age bracket. The decision is subject to a three-month scrutiny by the European Parliament, and in the meantime the Food Standards Agency will undertake a public consultation.
	As if an outbreak of foot and mouth were not enough, on 22 September the first case of bluetongue was found in East Anglia. Bluetongue is very different from foot and mouth disease. It is spread by midges rather than from animal to animal, and we cannot stamp it out by slaughtering infected animals. However, the cases that we have seen so far are in a limited geographical area, and seem to result from midges being carried over the North sea on the wind. As it happened in August, when movement controls were in place because of foot and mouth disease, that may help to control the spread.
	By 28 September, the increase in the number of cases indicated that the disease was circulating in our midge population, and we confirmed the presence of bluetongue in Great Britain. The bluetongue temporary area was therefore replaced by a control zone and a protection zone.
	A clear understanding of the spread of the disease is now crucial to help the industry, with the support of Government, to anticipate what may happen and what the appropriate response should be. That requires farmers in the zones to be vigilant and, for the sake of their industry, to report all new cases so that we can monitor whether spread is occurring. We will keep that approach under review with the industry, not least because the effects of bluetongue movement controls mean that decisions on control should be taken by the industry and not just by Ministers.
	This has been an exceptionally difficult summer for the farming industry. I know from talking to many farmers and their representatives just how hard and distressing it has been and still is, and I am grateful to the industry for its forbearance and support. I also want to thank all those from DEFRA, the Institute for Animal Health and other organisations whose professionalism, dedication and commitment have helped us to deal with these outbreaks. I am sure that the House will wish to express its thanks as well.
	I will, of course, keep the House informed of developments.

Peter Ainsworth: I thank the Secretary of State for his statement and welcome the relief package that he has announced, although it will go nowhere near meeting the huge economic cost of foot and mouth to the farming and related industries. As the Secretary of State said, this has been a terrible year for the farming community: between them, bluetongue and foot and mouth have effectively closed down the livestock industry over huge areas of countryside at the busiest time of the year. That has caused economic hardship, but we should not underestimate the emotional hardship that it is causing in rural communities, the impact on animal welfare, or the blow to the reputation of farming and the integrity of our scientific establishment.
	Will the Secretary of State confirm that, by a cruel twist of irony, work on a vaccine to protect against bluetongue has been put on hold because it was taking place at Pirbright, the source of the foot and mouth outbreak? When does he now expect a bluetongue vaccine to be available?
	Bluetongue may be a misfortune but foot and mouth disease is different. The Government have been caught red-handed and are damned by their negligence. We know that the source of the outbreak was a Government-regulated and licensed laboratory. We also know from Professor Spratt's report that the most likely cause of the infection was leaking drains. The Secretary of State has attempted to maintain that foot and mouth escaped from Pirbright through an extraordinary combination of circumstances, but the really extraordinary thing was the state of the drains at Pirbright.
	The Government's initial reaction to the outbreak was, I am afraid, characteristic. The Prime Minister announced that he was taking personal charge and immediately sent his spin machine into overdrive in an attempt to pin the blame on Merial, the private company at the site. That was shabby and dishonest and it smacked of desperation. The reason for the Prime Minister's desperation to find a scapegoat has since become clear. As long ago as 2002, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council stated in an official report:
	"Some laboratories and other areas of the Pirbright estate are not close to the standard expected of a modern bio-medical facility and are well below that expected of a facility of such importance".
	It recommended awarding funding for biosecurity at the site. What was the reaction from the then Chancellor? In the following two years, funding from DEFRA and other Government Departments to the Institute for Animal Health was cut.
	It gets worse. In July 2004, Merial wrote to DEFRA with proposals to replace the drains. Nothing happened for two years. Tenders for repairing the drainage systems were finally received in October 2006. Why did it take so long to obtain those tenders? Why did work not start until July this year? Why were repairs to the drainage system not prioritised? Is it not clear that if the Government had acted in a timely way on the repeated warnings about the integrity of the effluent pipes at Pirbright, the farming industry would not be facing a bill for hundreds of millions of pounds, and the reputation of British science would not have been dealt a body blow?
	Will the Secretary of State confirm that among the dangerous pathogens held at the Pirbright laboratories are viruses lethal to humans, such as E. coli, BSE and avian flu? Is it purely a matter of chance that it was the foot and mouth virus which escaped from Pirbright and not some more deadly disease?
	Does the Secretary of State accept that the Government's failure to secure the laboratories at Pirbright amounts to gross negligence? What provision has been made for compensating the farming community for the costs that it is suffering as a result of the Government's negligence?
	The Pirbright site was last inspected in December last year. What were the findings of that inspection? Why was the licence to operate not withdrawn? Can the Secretary of State confirm that if a dairy farm had been found to have such poor biosecurity, it would have been closed down?
	The Secretary of State states that a safety alert has been issued to all animal pathogen category 3 and 4 laboratories, which will be followed by inspections. On the basis of the inspection regime at Pirbright, what confidence can we have that they will be thorough and that any recommendations will be acted upon?
	I represent a Surrey constituency. I know how traumatic this whole affair has been for Surrey farmers and others in the immediate area, but I have also recently met with hill farmers in Wales. They too are deeply concerned about the viability of their businesses, about the welfare of their animals and about their own families and future. The same is true across the country. People want to know exactly how this disease got into the environment, yet that is the one question that the Government refuse to investigate further. How very convenient.
	How many people have been disciplined or removed from their posts as a result of this catalogue of negligence? Who is going to take responsibility? Will the Secretary of State take this opportunity to apologise? Can we not conclude that if this is what happens when the Prime Minister takes personal charge of a crisis, he is better off out of it and that, if the Labour Government cannot be trusted to deal with the foot and mouth virus, they cannot be trusted with anything?

Hilary Benn: I have to tell the hon. Gentleman that his conduct during the summer, when we spoke on a number of occasions about the matter, has not been matched by the tone of the points he has made today. I will respond directly to the legitimate questions that he has raised.

Graham Stuart: Answer all the questions.

Hilary Benn: I will.
	I recognise the emotional hardship that this has caused. It is a real blow for the farming industry—I know that from the conversations that I have had with farmers—and people are genuinely worried about the future. I know that some people are angry, too; I acknowledge that completely. What is the best way to help the farming industry to recover from these two blows? The first is to make sure that we make every effort to control the spread of these diseases and to eradicate them. Sixty-six days on from the first outbreak of foot and mouth, we have eight cases, all confined to Surrey. The whole House will wish to keep it that way. Our first line of defence in beating both of these diseases is the vigilance of farmers. I am genuinely grateful to the farming community for the efforts that it has made in that—

Graham Stuart: What about the drains at Pirbright?

Hilary Benn: I shall come to the drains in a moment, if the hon. Gentleman will bear with me.
	A vaccine for bluetongue may, we hope, become available next year. It depends on the speed with which those who are working on a vaccine can develop one, the speed with which it can be shown to be safe and effective, and the speed with which sufficient supplies of it can be manufactured so that all farmers—not just those in East Anglia but those in northern Europe who have been affected by bluetongue as it has spread across the continent—can have it available.
	The hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth) Surrey said that the Government refuse to investigate how exactly the virus got out. With respect, that is not the case. As soon as it became clear that the likely source of the outbreak was Pirbright—we knew what the strain was and that it was not currently circulating in animals—what were the first two things that the Government did? One was to ask the HSE to come in and investigate and the second was to ask Professor Brian Spratt to come in and look at biosecurity, with a commitment to publish in full their reports, which we did on 7 September. With great respect, to advance the argument that the Government have not been interested in trying to find out what happened does not bear examination when the hon. Gentleman looks at the facts.
	What do those reports say? They say that it was most likely to have been caused by—they cannot say for sure—an inactivated virus going into the drainpipe, the condition of the drains, the heavy rain and the flooding that brought it to the surface, and the movement of vehicles. Why were there vehicles on the site at Pirbright? They were on the site because, as the hon. Gentleman knows, we are in the process of investing a considerable sum of money in upgrading the facilities. The answer to his question is that, in 2002 and 2003, reports were produced. In 2005, the Government decided that we would invest £121 million— [ Interruption. ] I will come to that point in a moment. One of the two reviews that I have established in the light of the reports will look into that fair point.
	Why were there vehicles on the site? It is because work is under way to spend the money on renewing the facilities at Pirbright. Some £31 million of that money has already been spent on the site. It is a very fair question to ask and I have asked it too: if people thought that the drains were that much of a problem, why was some of that money not spent? The answer was that until the state of the drains was drawn to our attention, and everybody else's, as a result of the HSE investigation, nobody thought that they were in such a condition. That happens to be the truth.
	The next question relates to the inspection and licensing regime. I have asked Sir Bill Callaghan to look at the way in which we license, regulate and inspect institutions handling category 3 and 4 pathogens. Frankly, it is not a good system—reflecting upon it now—to have an organisation that is a significant customer of an institution also the licensor and regulator. That is something for Sir Bill Callaghan to reflect on when he reports back to me by December. My view, subject to his advice, is that we need to have a different system in future. We have taken seriously what happened: not only have we put a mechanism in place for looking at what should happen to the licensing of the handling of animal pathogens, but we have issued a notice to all institutions handling category 3 and 4 pathogens affecting human beings as well as animals. The review will look at that, as will the second review overseen by the BBSRC; it has responsibility for the Institute for Animal Health, and it will look at the management and governance of that body.
	On compensation, I have made an announcement about support. We can best support the farming industry to recover from this very difficult time by controlling the disease, winning the confidence of Europe and reopening farm-to-farm movements. We must also reopen markets, which we have done: despite the difficult history, last week we got an agreement from the EU that meat product exports will resume. All the farmers I have spoken to have said that the single most important step that can be taken is the resumption of meat product exports, and we are determined to help make that happen, but it depends on persuading our European colleagues.
	Finally, am I sorry that this has happened? I have already said that I am. Nobody would have wished this to happen, and I repeat that it should not have happened. But when something like this goes wrong—as it has—what is the most important thing that we should do? We should learn the lessons, sort it out and make sure that it does not happen again.

Eric Martlew: It was very interesting that the Secretary of State mentioned the vaccine for bluetongue. As he is aware, Cumbria was in the middle of the 2001 foot and mouth outbreak, which was a major outbreak. There was a lot of debate at that time about vaccination. That was rejected then, and it appears that vaccination has been rejected once more. Will the Secretary of State tell me why it has been rejected and under what circumstances we will use vaccine in the future?

Hilary Benn: The contingency plan for foot and mouth stated that we would consider whether vaccination had a part to play in helping us to control the disease after the first measures were taken, such as the use of protection and surveillance zones and the culling of infected animals and of dangerous contacts. Extensive surveillance has been undertaken by the vets and the staff of the Institute for Animal Health—and I know that some Members present have met some of the teams that have been working so hard since the beginning of the outbreak to make sure that we have the necessary information to discover whether the approach we are taking will work. On both occasions—the first and second parts of the outbreak—we stood up vaccination capacity and made an order for vaccines, but in both cases we have decided that the measures we have taken appear to have contained the outbreak: there have been eight cases in Surrey 66 days on. If we were to reach a point where we thought that vaccination was necessary to help us control the spread of an outbreak, I would be willing to consider it, but that has not so far proved necessary.

Christopher Huhne: The source of this outbreak of foot and mouth was the Pirbright laboratory, which is regulated, monitored and licensed by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. In short, a facility designed to protect British farming from infection was responsible, to quote from the DEFRA report, "beyond reasonable doubt"—which is, after all, the test in a criminal case—for the infection, and DEFRA was in turn responsible for its biosecurity and safety. Do the Government now accept that they have a legal obligation, and certainly a moral one, to compensate those whose businesses have been damaged by the outbreak, and what is the Government's estimate of the losses to British farming?
	What is suggested for hill farmers is welcome, but it does not go far enough. Also, what support does the Secretary of State propose to give to lowland farmers across England? What about farms within the control zones? Why has a similar scheme to that proposed in Scotland and Wales, giving a minimum price per animal, not been proposed in England? English farmers are on the brink, too, and DEFRA's incompetence has put them there.
	The second key point is that the Secretary of State must end the culture of impunity in his Department. We saw that with the fiasco over the Rural Payments Agency, and we now see it again with the Pirbright scandal. How long did it take the Department to establish biosecurity at Pirbright once the foot and mouth outbreak had occurred? When was the Secretary of State satisfied that there was no further risk of a leak of dangerous virus from Pirbright?
	We know that specifically the drainage system—not merely the general state of Pirbright—was a subject of concern from correspondence from July 2004, so DEFRA had known about the health and safety issues at Pirbright and Compton for at least three years. Who was the most senior official, or Minister, to be informed of the problems with the drains at Pirbright? Why was work on dangerous pathogens not stopped as a result of these concerns? Will those responsible now be held to account, and will they resign? Will the Secretary of State name the official responsible for the licensing of Pirbright, and state whether that official is still in post? If they are—if they are not held to account—what encouragement does the Secretary of State think that that gives to anyone else in his Department to perform creditably in future?
	So far, the reports from the Health and Safety Executive and Professor Spratt have given us a snapshot of the problem, but not an analysis of the organisational failings. Will the Secretary of State set up a public inquiry into how this débacle could have happened—an inquiry that will make recommendations to ensure that it never happens again?

Hilary Benn: On the question of legal obligations, in the end, that is a matter for the courts to determine. We are aware that some of those affected by this outbreak are consulting lawyers, so it is only right and proper that we should await any proceedings that anyone may choose to bring in those circumstances.
	Secondly, the best help that we can give to those in the lowlands is to do what we have been doing: to try to get economic activity restarted. The single most important thing that we can do is to allow farmers to trade again, which is why so much effort has been devoted to that, and why we divided the country into a risk area and a low-risk area, regionalising the country in order to try to allow farm-to-farm movements and the resumption of markets as quickly as possible. In effect, we put a bigger buffer zone around the protection and surveillance zones in Surrey—Europe said that it wanted to add an extra buffer, which is why other counties have been brought in—thereby enabling a decision to be taken on the resumption of meat product exports. I hope that before long, the matter is in the hands of the Commission and of the Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health, not me, and that the size of that buffer zone can be reduced, so that more farmers in more counties can benefit from the steps that have taken place.
	Why have we not introduced a welfare disposal scheme? One reason is that I have not received representations from the National Farmers Union and others saying that that is the single most important thing that we should do in England. I recognise that the situation is different in Scotland and Wales, which is why they are proceeding with such schemes. Indeed, the farmers' leaders whom I have spoken to have stressed the importance of getting economic activity started again.
	With respect, I reject what the hon. Gentleman says about a culture of impunity within DEFRA. There is a very important point that he needs to bear in mind, particularly in relation to the drains. DEFRA's role is as licensor and regulator. The consultation that took place with it, as licensor and regulator, was about whether, if the drains were changed, a new system would be adequate for the purposes of licensing and regulation. DEFRA was not at any time asked for funding to replace the drains. Why not? It is for the very simple reason that it is the licensor and the regulator. A factory that had a problem that the HSE identified would not say to it, "By the way, you are the licensor and regulator—can we have some money to put it right?" The proper place to go is of course the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, which is the organisation responsible.
	The second point concerns what I said to the hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth), who speaks for the official Opposition, about the considerable amount of money that has been put into this site already. I share with him the question as to why, if it was so important, some of that money was not directed to it. The answer is that people did not think that it was as important as it turned out to be. That is the truth.
	Will there be a public inquiry? No, there will not. What am I doing in addition to the two inquiries that I set up immediately we discovered the likely source of the virus? In addition to those two inquiries and the reviews by Bill Callaghan and the BBSRC, we have asked Iain Anderson, who reported on the 2001 outbreak and therefore appears to be the most appropriate person to do it, to reflect on how this outbreak has been handled. He can look into all the matters that he wants to and then he will report back to us. The report will also be published.
	In other words, there will have been two inquiries, two reviews and another inquiry led by Iain Anderson. I hope that the House will agree that that shows that the Government take their responsibility seriously. I know that the hon. Gentleman is keen to point fingers at individuals; I am much more interested in putting things right.

Russell Brown: Had it not been for the fact that a third outbreak was detected on 12 September, we would have been much more advanced than we are today, and perhaps many would not have felt their plight so severely. When my right hon. Friend mentioned that case, he spoke of undetected infection. Is he able to tell the House how long that undetected infection had lain there before it was picked up by anyone at all?

Hilary Benn: Yes. The epidemiological report that was published suggested that the lesions in the animals at infected premises 5 could have been three or possibly four weeks old. That gives us part of the answer to the question that we all asked on 12 September—where has the virus been for a month and a bit? The answer was that it had been outside the original protection and surveillance zone, undetected and, as a result, unreported. That reinforces the point that inspection is the first line of defence and it fills in a gap in the timeline. That is what has transpired, and I am not interested in pointing a finger at anyone else in relation to this issue; as I said to the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne), I want to fix it.

Humfrey Malins: In paying tribute to the fortitude of the farmers, the smallholders and the villagers of Normandy in my constituency, where the foot and mouth outbreak began, and of Pirbright, the home of the two much respected organisations of the animal health institute and Merial, may I also thank the Secretary of State and the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Jonathan Shaw) for their kindness in keeping in touch with me so regularly as constituency MP during the crisis? It was much appreciated.
	Can the Secretary of State guarantee that the problem has been resolved, as far as Surrey is concerned? Can he guarantee that the investment in the institute at Pirbright will continue and improve over the next few years? Finally, can he be specific about the compensation that he has in mind and how it can be obtained by local farmers and smallholders in the Surrey area?

Hilary Benn: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his kind words and his support and interest during what has been a very difficult time for his constituents. In truth, I cannot guarantee that it is over. I can simply tell the House that, 66 days in and after eight cases, there has not been one for a week. I am sure that the House will understand if we say that in the light of the experience that we have all been through this summer, I am inclined to be a bit cautious about trying to predict the future, but I am working as hard as I can to try to safeguard the present.
	I can give the hon. Gentleman the assurance that the investment that the Government had previously announced—and that has already started to go into Pirbright—will continue. It is important that we have first-class facilities. Old is not necessarily unsafe, which is the point that Professor Brian Spratt made in his report. The hon. Gentleman is right to draw attention to the vital role that Pirbright plays in protecting us from animal disease more generally and the role that it has played in turning round test results really quickly, which has enabled us to take quick decisions about how to deal with it in the circumstances.
	On compensation, we have of course compensated all the farmers who lost animals through culling and we paid for primary and secondary disinfection in all the infected premises, but if farmers wish to pursue further compensation cases, I refer the House to the answer I gave a little earlier.

Geraldine Smith: I am pleased that the Secretary of State has listened to farmers and done something about the terrible plight that they face this year. The outbreak happened at the worst possible time of the year for hill farmers and when I talk to farmers in the Lune valley they point out many of the same concerns that the Secretary of State has raised. The resumption of exports was extremely important to them, as was an aid package for hill farmers. Can my right hon. Friend assure me that the aid package will be paid quickly, and can he give me some idea of the time scales, because cash flow is important to farmers?

Hilary Benn: I hope that the payments will be made by the beginning of November and, like my hon. Friend, I am anxious that that should happen as quickly as possible. The outbreak did indeed happen at the worst possible time, especially for hill farmers, which is why I have announced the package of support today. Hill farmers—some of whom I met on Thursday—have bills to be paid and decisions to make about when to take their animals to market to sell them, so the support will give farmers slightly more opportunity to see how the market unfolds and take decisions about what is best in the circumstances. At Skipton market on Thursday it was heartening to see that although prices were down they were slightly better than some farmers had feared. I hope that remains the case.

Philip Hammond: Quite rightly, the focus of attention today has been on the economic damage to the livestock farming industry and the terrible trauma suffered by some of my constituents and those of my hon. Friends who have been directly affected by the outbreak of foot and mouth disease, but as the Secretary of State knows, the area affected is not primarily a livestock farming area. Is he aware that the movement restrictions in the protection zone are having a serious impact on other, non-agricultural, businesses and can he tell the House what measures he is considering to support businesses, some of which are under extreme pressure? Will he please not tell the House in response that owners of other affected businesses will have to look to taking legal action against the Government to get compensation or support for the loss they are suffering?

Hilary Benn: I do not wish to disappoint the hon. Gentleman, but as he is aware, it has been the policy of Governments—not just this Government, but other Governments—that compensation is not paid for consequential economic loss, so I can give him no comfort on that score. The nature of the area in which the outbreak occurred has meant that it is relatively lightly stocked, which is an advantage, but it has also meant that animals kept there are not necessarily on the registers, which is one of the difficulties that vets and animal health staff have faced. We ease restrictions where it is right and proper to do so, having taken account of the veterinary risk. I know it is tough and difficult, but the one thing the House would not forgive me for would be if I were to lift those restrictions—on the advice of the chief veterinary officer, which I have taken on every occasion—in a way that undermined our chance of containing and ultimately eradicating foot and mouth.

Gordon Banks: Can my right hon. Friend advise the House whether he has any plans to pass to the Scottish Executive responsibility for all decision-making processes affecting livestock movements and associated matters relevant to future foot and mouth outbreaks in Scotland?

Hilary Benn: As my hon. Friend is aware, a lot of those decisions already fall to the Scottish Executive and one of our tasks in dealing with the outbreak has been to make sure that we work in partnership with the Scottish Executive and the Welsh Assembly Government. My hon. Friend's question gives me the chance to pay tribute to them for the co-operation and support we have received.
	The outbreak has thrown into sharp relief for me the issue of cost and responsibility in the industry. I cannot help reflecting on the fact that some of the decisions that it falls to the holder of this office to take during the course of the outbreak are ones that, in a different way of doing things, might fall to the industry or some form of organisation representing stakeholders. I say that because last Thursday afternoon when I talked to farmers in Newmarket affected by bluetongue, I saw that there was a difference of interest between those caught by the bluetongue control area and farmers in other parts of the country. Once this is all over, I for one will come back to discussions about cost and responsibility in a new light because in future we ought to be looking at different ways of taking decisions about how restrictions are put in place and lifted.

Michael Jack: I, too, thank the Secretary of State and his Ministers for keeping me closely posted of developments. Does he accept that the outbreaks of both foot and mouth and bluetongue raise wider issues about biosecurity on farms in this country? As part of the inquiries he is holding, will he include an assessment of how well prepared farmers are in terms of the effectiveness of their on-farm biosecurity arrangements, especially taking into account the fact that in the livestock sector they are under economic pressure, they cannot always afford the best veterinary or biosecurity advice and there is an overall shortage of vets with large-animal experience?

Hilary Benn: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his kind words, and I will pass on exactly what he has said to Iain Anderson. He has a very wide remit, but the right hon. Gentleman raises an important point, and I will ask Iain Anderson to look at it as part of his work.

Paddy Tipping: I welcome the Secretary of State's comments about involving farmers and stakeholders in wider discussions about biosecurity and about the need to look at insurance-based risk policies. I congratulate him particularly on learning the lessons from the 2001 outbreak, by declining to close the countryside to visitors, because it is the value of people using our footpaths, pubs, shops, restaurants and attractions that keeps the rural economy going. We need to be clear that, although farming makes an important contribution to the rural economy, other drivers are there as well.

Hilary Benn: I agree, particularly with the last point. In the end, we have to strike a balance, and we have all been at great pains to emphasise that the countryside is open, although there have been concerns about footpaths in the protection zones in Surrey—an issue that a number of Members who represent constituencies there have raised with me—and we have found a sensible way forward in those circumstances.
	My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we need to look at some of those wider considerations in relation to the industry, because these are fundamentally diseases that have a very severe economic impact. That goes back to the point made by the right hon. Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack), who is the Chairman of the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, about what more can be done to try to anticipate such things and to find out what kind of insurance might be available and, bluntly, to work out how the cost of dealing with this will be shared in those circumstances. Those are precisely issues to put into the discussions about cost and responsibility once this is over.

Angus MacNeil: As a humble and active crofter, I declare an interest. In Scotland, we have 250,000 lambs stuck on hills or slowed from moving from hills or islands. The export market has been closed for the crucial two months of the autumn, resulting in massive grazing pressure. Of course, the situation is similar in Wales. Following advice from the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the chief vet on welfare concerns for livestock, the Scottish Government have responsibly prepared a sheep welfare scheme, details of which will be announced tomorrow. However, as Westminster still exercises powers to collect Scottish taxes and given that this emerged from a Westminster Government laboratory, will the Government live up to their responsibilities and fund the Scottish and Welsh schemes fully? A proper welfare scheme is, of course, needed to offset the loss of millions of pounds suffered by Scottish and Welsh crofters and farmers. Will the Minister please remember the crucial point that sheep numbers across the nations of the UK do not follow normal Barnett percentages?

Hilary Benn: I am indeed conscious of the last point that the hon. Gentleman makes. Of course, as he says, the Scottish Executive and the Welsh Assembly Government are developing their own schemes to deal with the circumstances. I grant entirely the point that he makes about the hills in Scotland and Wales, where the pressures are particularly acute, given the weather and the time of the year, and it is for each Administration to decide on the most appropriate way forward. We do not yet know the total cost of dealing with this outbreak, and there is a genuine debate to be had about the extent to which welfare disposal schemes constitute an animal health issue, as opposed to support for the industry, which is facing real economic difficulties. One of the issues that I must address in time, once the total cost is known, is whether it can be managed within my budget and, if not, there are traditional routes that one turns to, including conversations with the Treasury, and the devolved Administrations can, of course, do the same.

Nick Ainger: A number of colleagues have already referred to this happening at the worst time possible for the farming industry and for the impact that it has certainly had on the sheep sales of hill farmers in Wales. However, the solution is clearly to get trade back to normality as quickly as possible. My right hon. Friend's statement did not refer to the possibility of resuming live exports, particularly of sheep and calves, which are a mainstay of the dairy industry. Although it is welcome that a compensation package is in place in England, Wales and Scotland and that meat exports will resume from Friday onwards, can he tell the House any more about what pressure can be brought to bear on the European Union, so that we return to normality with live exports?

Hilary Benn: The resumption of live exports is some way away yet; that will depend on the passage of time following the confirmation of the last case—currently, the eighth infected premises. Exports to the rest of the world will follow later, because of international animal health organisation rules. Product exports are worth about £40 million and live exports about £2 million, so the single most important thing that we can do is support the resumption of product exports. That is what the Commission has agreed to do for large parts of the country from this coming Friday. As I said earlier, I hope that the area from which such exports can come will increase with time.

Roger Williams: I draw the House's attention to my declarations of interest as a livestock farmer.
	The losses suffered by the livestock industry absolutely dwarf the compensation scheme that the Secretary of State has announced today. Lack of marketing opportunities, increased costs and a dramatic fall in the price of breeding stock and stock for slaughter have caused those losses. Will the Secretary of State commission an independent review on the losses that have been suffered by the agricultural industry, so that the Government can be in a position to offer a realistic compensation scheme when those losses are known?

Hilary Benn: I am happy to write to the hon. Gentleman with our current best assessment of what we think those economic losses are. I undertake to put a copy of that letter in the Library. Clearly, the situation will change over time; as product exports resume, losses that might otherwise be incurred may not be.
	As I have learned during the past couple of months, farmers face really difficult decisions in deciding whether to sell now or not; they are wondering where the market will be in a week's or a month's time. In truth, we do not yet know what the full economic impact will be; nor do we know how much it might be possible to recover some of that because of the changes in movement, markets and product export that are about to come upon us. That is why we do not yet know the full answer to the fair question that the hon. Gentleman has raised.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Doug Hoyle.

Lindsay Hoyle: Lindsay—I am looking older, but not quite that old, Mr. Deputy Speaker. At least, I hope that I do not; it would have been a bad summer.
	The bluetongue virus is a worry for sheep farmers, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is well aware. Does he believe that a hard winter could eradicate the virus in the UK, or that it would lie dormant, only to reappear early next spring? If the latter were true, the pressure would be about where it would appear next. That is the first part.
	Secondly, I should say that the issue is about money that farmers need, and my right hon. Friend is right about that. However, we ought to push supermarkets and the middlemen to pay fair prices and ensure that farmers can survive, rather than be squeezed, as they have been in the past 15 years. Please, let us put pressure on the supermarkets and the middlemen—fair farm-gate prices are the future for farming.

Hilary Benn: My hon. Friend makes a good point. At the beginning of this outbreak, I spoke to the heads of all the main supermarkets to make that point—"Farmers are having a difficult time; anything and everything that you can do to assist would be much appreciated." That is why money for promotion and to help with exports is part of the package that I announced today; those are practical steps that we can take to try to get the market operating again.
	On the bluetongue virus and the winter, I cannot predict how cold or otherwise the winter will be, but as the weather gets cooler there will undoubtedly be less midge activity. The evidence from Europe last year was that the midges with the virus did overwinter and came back with a bit of a vengeance at the start of this year. So winter may provide a temporary respite, but if the experience of northern Europe is anything to go by, the virus will be back next year. That is why the development of a vaccine is so important.

David Curry: I am grateful to the Secretary of State for his visit to Skipton market in my constituency and for the package of measures he has announced today. If he wished to do a little extra, he might look at the veterinary fees that auction marts have to pay when they are in session. He will know that upland farmers make a significant part of their livelihood from sales to the lowland. In Skipton next week, the most crucial sales of the year—sales of stock for breeding and fattening to the lowland—begin. Many farmers do not have a great deal of choice about whether they sell, because there is no grass or keep left. But they do not know whether there are going to be any buyers, because many of the buyers are in the bluetongue zones in the south of England and they do not know whether they can afford to buy.
	The Secretary of State might wish that somebody else would take the decision, or that there was another means of taking the decision, about the extension, maintenance and life of the bluetongue protection zone, but if the sales are to be economically effective, it is crucial that people know where they stand. Please will he recognise the urgency of taking the decision about the bluetongue zone? The fortunes of foot and mouth disease-struck farmers depend a great deal on that.

Hilary Benn: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for joining me at Skipton market last Thursday, where he made the very good point that the market is not just crucial to the livelihood of his constituents, but is an important part of their social networks. I saw that for myself. He is absolutely right. As I travelled down to Newmarket, I encountered exactly the point that he has raised.
	I want to be frank with the House about the dilemma that we face as far as the bluetongue zones are concerned. By putting the zones in place in the way that we have, we are trying to restrict the movement of bluetongue to other parts of the country. But the price of that is that the farmers I met in Newmarket said, "Well, I'm not sure that we are going to go to the sales in Skipton and elsewhere next week because, while we can buy the animals and bring them into the bluetongue zone, we're not sure that we can ever get them out again because of the restrictions that you've put in place."
	The dilemma for the industry, and for us—let us be frank about it—is that we are balancing trying to minimise the likelihood that bluetongue will spread to other parts of the country, which would be the consequence of widening the zone to allow greater movement and trade, and a passage to abattoirs, against trying to minimise the economic impact for both the hill farmers whom the right hon. Gentleman represents and the farmers in East Anglia who would be buying. The right place to have that conversation is with the industry. In the end, yes, we will have to take a decision, but it is a real dilemma. Those conversations are taking place now and it is important that, as Members, we all contribute to them, because it is a tough choice to make.

Angela Browning: On foot and mouth, the Secretary of State mentioned the contamination of the drains and the spread of the disease by vehicles. Can he confirm that his investigations have either ruled out, or are at least looking at, the possibility of the disease spreading through watercourses from the spoil that was excavated from the drains on the Pirbright site? I ask because I have had letters on the subject. Clearly, there was a second outbreak, further on, and I understand that it is possible that if spoil had got into the watercourse, it could have contributed to the latest outbreaks.

Hilary Benn: I do not know whether the hon. Lady is referring to spoil within the Pirbright site.

Angela Browning: Yes.

Hilary Benn: The Health and Safety Executive went over the Pirbright site with a pretty fine toothcomb and, as the hon. Lady can read in the report that it produced and which I published on 7 September, the HSE's best assessment is that the route of transmission was the one that it describes. I am not aware—but I will go back and check the report again—that anybody thinks that movement of the virus directly from watercourses to other parts of Surrey could possibly be the route. However, the reason I said earlier that one cannot be 100 per cent. sure is because that is what the two reports said. The explanation is the most likely one, but we cannot be 100 per cent. sure. Professor Spratt reinforced the point that we are also learning about the extent to which the virus can survive out in the open, depending on the climatic conditions.
	One of the lessons that we will have to learn from this—not just in the UK, but in other countries in Europe—relates to protection and surveillance zones. Since this is not the first time—if I remember rightly, there was a case some years back of a virus escaping from a laboratory in the Netherlands—are there lessons that we need to learn about the nature of the controls that we put in place in case there is an outbreak from such a source? I undertake to go away and reflect on the points that the hon. Lady has raised.

Gary Streeter: Given that the bluetongue virus has been at large on the continent for several years, is there not an extensive body of research and best practice that we can draw down from our continental partners, so that we can learn more quickly how to either eradicate the midge, or create a proper vaccine? Surely we do not have to reinvent the wheel on our own.

Hilary Benn: No, we do not. The hon. Gentleman makes a really good point. I discussed that precise issue with the deputy chief veterinary officer earlier this afternoon. We had a control plan in place, because we and the industry anticipated that at some point the wind would be in the wrong direction, and that the virus was likely to come across the channel or the North sea, and that appears to have transpired. The countries in northern Europe that have been badly affected are learning how to live with the problem, and are considering what variations one can make within the controls that Europe lays down. In answer to an earlier question, I set out one of the dilemmas that we face. We will indeed draw on the experience of other countries, because they had the virus first, and I am sure that we have a lot to learn from them.

Alan Beith: Bearing in mind the impact that the devastating market conditions are having on Northumbrian farmers, who struggled to rebuild their businesses after the 2001 outbreak, is it really enough to advise Departments that it might be a good time to buy a bit more meat? Ought not the Government to consider the purchase of meat, particularly lamb, for cold storage on a systematic scale?

Hilary Benn: I know that there have been such schemes in the past. The right hon. Gentleman will, in fairness, recognise that the question of what the Government can do to buy, what supermarkets can do to purchase, what meat individuals choose to buy, and the issue of financial compensation and so on is part of a contribution, although it is not enough, and it is not the only thing that we are doing. Instead of putting the meat into storage purchased by the Government, I would much rather that it went into the supply chain, with us having got economic activity back up and running. That is what we, with Europe, are concentrating on trying to do.

Henry Bellingham: Bluetongue has the capacity totally to devastate the livestock industry, not just in East Anglia but throughout the country. Has the Secretary of State looked into a possible compensation scheme for farmers who are affected, and for those who could well be affected in future?

Hilary Benn: No, I have not. I accept entirely the point that the hon. Gentleman makes about the nature of the threat, having looked at the death rates among sheep affected by bluetongue in northern Europe, but it is not the only disease that has to be dealt with by the farming industry and those who keep livestock. It is fundamentally a severe economic problem for the industry. The industry feared that it would arrive, and obviously we will have to see how things unfold. Of course, the best route for preventing the situation that the hon. Gentleman describes is to develop a vaccine as quickly as possible, and to make sure that it is used to protect livestock.

Several hon. Members: rose —

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I appreciate that these are important matters, but we must move on to other business.

Points of Order

Andrew Murrison: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I seek your advice on what opportunities exist for the Home Secretary, whom I have contacted, to correct the impression that she gave at her party's conference in Bournemouth—the impression that she does not hold our Territorial Army, on which her Government are heavily reliant, in the high esteem that is surely its due.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I have to say to the hon. Gentleman that I am not quite clear what he is referring to, but it is up to the Members concerned to respond to any remarks made outside the House.

Andrew MacKinlay: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. On Wednesday, the House will discuss the European treaty, and at 2.30 pm the Foreign Secretary will come before the Foreign Affairs Committee as a witness on the proposed treaty. In the Vote Office, a copy of the draft European treaty, which emerged last week after the meeting of a group of legal experts, is not available. It was dispatched to the Foreign Office on 5 October. The Foreign Office has been able to produce the draft declarations, but the protocols are not available, and nor is the latest draft of the treaty. It is unacceptable and sloppy that it is not available today. I wonder whether you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, could use your good offices to put a rocket under the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, so that it gets some of its Johnnies over here quickly with some copies.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I am not sure that the matter will be dealt with in quite the way that the hon. Gentleman suggests, but I am grateful to him for bringing it to the attention of the House. Clearly, all the proper papers should be available at the appropriate time for Members to look at, and I am sure that those on the Treasury Bench will have taken note of his point of order.

Bernard Jenkin: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Given that I have an outbreak of bluetongue in my constituency and that I unfortunately failed to catch your eye following the statement, is there some way in which I can bring extra pressure to bear so that I might raise the matter on the Adjournment of the House?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman was not called at the time of the statement, but he will appreciate that it went on for nearly an hour and that lots of hon. Members have an interest in these matters. He is an experienced Member of the House and he will know that there are other ways of raising these issues. The point that he has made has been noted, and I am sure that he will find other ways of raising the question of bluetongue in his constituency.

Edward Garnier: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I fully appreciate the time constraints that the House, and therefore you, are under this afternoon. Can you ask the Speaker to contact the DEFRA ministerial team directly, to see whether it might be possible to have a subsidiary statement later in the week? The bluetongue boundary goes straight through the middle of my constituency, and I have constituents who are affected either way. It would be hugely important for the welfare of my constituents and indeed for the greater edification of the House if the Secretary of State for the relevant Department could be asked to come back here to discuss the matter further this week.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Sadly, I fear that these matters will continue for some time. The Secretary of State responsible for them has said that he will keep the House informed, and I am sure that that means that he will be coming back to the House on future occasions, on which the hon. and learned Gentleman will have the opportunity to put to him the serious problems in his constituency.

Julian Brazier: Further to the point of order made by my hon. Friend the Member for Westbury (Dr. Murrison), Mr. Deputy Speaker. The Army's unofficial websites are buzzing with fury at the derogatory jibe made by the Home Secretary about the Territorial Army. There is a real problem with the structure of this place, in that when Ministers speak outside their briefs, they do not appear to be directly accountable to the House. By what mechanism can the Home Secretary be pressed on this matter? Six young Territorials have died on active service in the past two or three years, and a much larger number have been wounded. This remark has caused grave angst among people serving abroad and their families.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I understand the concern— [ Interruption. ] Order. I understand the concern that the hon. Gentleman raises. These are clearly important matters. Every Member of the House, whatever role they occupy, should be very careful about the language that they use, both inside and outside the House. At the end of the day, every right hon. and hon. Member is responsible for their own words, but they also eventually have to come back to the House to justify them.

Peter Bottomley: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. You will notice that on page 2828 of the Order of Business for today, there are a number of written ministerial statements. No. 14 concerns recruitment to medical training. The House will probably know that Sir John Tooke's report was released at midday today. I understand why no copies are available; I am not sure that he has had a printed copy yet. However, given that this report into what might gently be called the chaos of what happened in the summer also includes, as appendix 9, the Douglas review's final report, which was not provided to the House in July, would it be possible to invite the Secretary of State for Health to consider making a statement tomorrow, as well as a written statement today, when the Tooke report is available, so that hon. Members can question him on what happened under the previous Secretary of State? This is an important issue, but the report is not available today for us to read.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I understand the hon. Gentleman's concern about this matter. Whether to make written or oral statements is entirely a matter for the Minister responsible, but I know that this is an important issue and no doubt those on the Front Bench will have heard the hon. Gentleman's point of order.

Orders of the Day

Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

Jack Straw: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
	Since 1997, crime has come down by a third and the chances of becoming a victim of crime are the lowest for 26 years. Many more offences have been brought to justice and the number of asylum seekers is at its lowest level since 1993, while removals are up by 10 per cent. Part of that achievement is down to increased investment in key public services: 20,000 additional prison places, 14,000 additional police officers, 16,000 community support officers and a 72 per cent. increase in probation spending. However, that increased investment has had to be accompanied by major changes in the environment in which law enforcement and criminal justice agencies and key parties such as local authorities operate. Reform of the youth justice system, partnerships with local authorities, streamlining immigration appeals, as well as the creation of specific criminal offences, all require detailed changes in the law.
	While in other areas of public administration such as pensions, social security, health or education, Parliament and the public have long accepted that much of the primary legislation should be framework and enabling in nature with the detail contained in regulation, in this area, where we are dealing with critical issues concerning the safety of the public and the liberty of the individual, the detail itself has to be contained in the primary legislation.
	In turn, that has meant, for as long as I have been in the House, that there have been many criminal justice and immigration Bills. I am told that this is the 39th since 1997, although if the Opposition wish to examine the record, they will see that numbers were previously above that level. I understand the concern, especially among practitioners, for less frequent changes in the law. The problem that we face—I do, and we all do—is to balance that requirement for stability against the need to ensure that the system and the substantive law are responsive to changing demands from the public and practitioners. One example from many is the revolution in technology and communications that we witness today. Virtually the whole Bill is explained by just such changing circumstances, as I shall set out now as I deal with key parts of the Bill.

Chris Bryant: Another reason for introducing legislation is to overcome anomalies that may already exist in respect of other legislation. For some considerable time, we have had an offence of incitement to racial hatred, and we now have an offence of incitement to religious hatred. Is it not now time that we had an offence of incitement to hatred on grounds of sexual orientation? The number of people facing homophobic attacks—both physical and verbal, and often directly associated with the vile propaganda of organisations such as the British National party—is now growing, not falling.

Jack Straw: My hon. Friend anticipates me, and I hope to ensure that he is satisfied with what I have to say.
	Let us take part 6 of the Bill, which relates to the possession of extreme pornographic material. Ten years ago, the internet was in its infancy, Google was not even a word in the English language and possession of pornographic material was by proof of control of the physical material—silver oxide photographs on paper, celluloid film or video tape. Distribution, too, was by physical means. Now we have the internet, and along with the innumerable benefits that it brings have come significant risks to public protection. Information, photographs and videos can be shared instantaneously across the world, but so too can deeply offensive, violent and illegal pornography.
	We believe that those who produce and publish this vile material in the UK are already covered by legislation, but we need the new offences created by part 6 for those who possess it, because the makers and distributors are very often operating across borders, from eastern Europe, the United States and elsewhere.

Martin Salter: Has the Secretary of State had the opportunity to meet Liz Longhurst from Reading, who has campaigned tirelessly for three years for precisely this measure to clamp down on extreme internet images, which she and many others are convinced directly led to the murder of her lovely daughter, Jane, in Brighton three years ago?

Jack Straw: Thanks to my hon. Friend, I have indeed had an opportunity briefly to meet Mrs. Longhurst, and I would like to pay tribute to her on behalf of the whole House, and to express our sincere condolences for the grief that she and her family suffered as a result of this terrible murder of her daughter, Jane. I would also like to applaud the campaign that she has so skilfully and resolutely waged. I hope that the clauses in part 6 will at least go some way to meeting her concerns, although nothing, of course, can bring back her daughter or take away the grief that has been caused.
	Another example of the changing environment is nuisance and disturbance in national health service premises. There is great concern among NHS staff about the wholly unwarranted upset, and very much worse, that they have been caused by the bad behaviour of some patients and members of the public. Indeed, I have read figures referring to 58,000 assaults of one kind or another on NHS staff in a single year, which obviously represents stress on the staff and great costs for the public, warranted by staff being off sick.
	The nurses, doctors, porters and other staff who work in the health service deserve our respect and gratitude for what they do. They should never have to work under the spectre of intimidation, nor run the gauntlet of threats. That is why part 9 will make it an offence to cause nuisance or disturbance on NHS premises.

Neil Gerrard: Can my right hon. Friend clarify whether that part of the Bill covers not just hospital premises, but GP surgeries, which may not necessarily be owned by the NHS? I have come across cases of GPs and their staff having to deal with some extremely difficult people who have been abusive and threatening.

Jack Straw: My recollection, having read the Bill very carefully, is that the definition of NHS premises does not extend to GP surgeries, but I am happy for my hon. Friend or other Members to ensure that the issue is examined in detail upstairs in Committee. I am grateful to him for raising it.
	Sometimes, one limited innovation in the law works sufficiently well for there to be a wide demand, including from practitioners, for its extension. The Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 gave to the police the power to close crack houses, which has been used to the benefit of some 1,000 communities. However, I think we all have constituency examples of continued disturbance from other premises, which might be residential houses. There is particular difficulty where those houses are, for example, private rented homes beyond the control of local authorities or other social landlords, or in some cases owner-occupied homes.
	Part 9 will amend that Act to cover premises associated with significant, persistent disorder or nuisance. That builds on experience in Scotland under a provision passed by the Scottish Parliament that has also worked well to ensure that excessive and persistent antisocial behaviour, which has a devastating impact on neighbours and the wider community, can be dealt with in such a way.
	Alongside providing practitioners on the front line with the powers that they need, we also need to ensure that courts are applying appropriate sentences. We would be failing in our responsibility to society if we concentrated only on how we deal with offenders and did not focus on preventing offending behaviour in the first instance. Stopping young people being drawn into crime must be a priority, which is why part 1 will introduce a new community sentence—the youth rehabilitation order.

Helen Jones: The youth rehabilitation order will allow courts to impose drug treatment requirements, but it says nothing about alcohol. My right hon. Friend will be aware of the widespread concern in my constituency about alcohol fuelling crime, following the appalling murder of my constituent Mr. Garry Newlove, and will have heard the comments made by the chief constable after that murder. If alcohol is not to be covered by the drug treatment requirement, will my right hon. Friend undertake to reconsider the matter in Committee, so that, as well as trying to prevent under-age drinking, we can deal with it when it causes crime?

Jack Straw: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that issue. If I may on this occasion, I shall express my condolences and those of the whole House to the family of Garry Newlove and his community over the grievous loss that they suffered in this terrible murder. I do understand the concern. As she may know, I was in the adjoining constituency of Warrington, South last Thursday to visit one of Her Majesty's prisons, and I was asked by the local press about the matter. I shall ensure that my right hon. Friend the Minister of State considers her points carefully, and if possible, that we meet the concerns that she has identified.
	If we are to protect society from violent and dangerous offenders, and to reduce offending, we need to consider carefully the balance between the use of prison, community penalties and fines. As I have indicated, we have provided 20,000 prison places since 1997, which is twice the rate of the previous Administration. We have also extended the use of effective and tough community penalties—

Robert Marshall-Andrews: Will the Home Secretary give way?

Jack Straw: In a moment.
	We have increased investment in drug interventions tenfold, and increased investment in probation services by 72 per cent. Under this Government, judges and magistrates are sending more people to prison and for longer. The protection of the public is and will remain our primary concern, demonstrated perhaps no more clearly than by the fact that 60 per cent. more violent and serious offenders are in prison now than in 1997.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: May I apologise for addressing my right hon. Friend as the Home Secretary? No gratuitous insult was intended. What powers under part 1 and the youth rehabilitation order are not available under one or other of the number of orders currently available to the Crown or magistrates court?

Jack Straw: My hon. and learned Friend will no doubt wish to take a 100 lines to remind himself that I am now the Lord Chancellor. I am proud of my period as Home Secretary, too, during which I always enjoyed his full support. Additional coverage is available under the order specified in part 1, including in respect of residential and activity orders.

Edward Garnier: I am most grateful to the Lord High Chancellor, as he likes to be called, for giving way. Before we get too far into the debate, will he confirm the way in which the 20,000 additional prison places, which he claims have been created since 1997, came about? A few thousand genuinely new prison places have been created, most of which are the result of contracts let by the previous Government. Will he also confirm that tonight 18,000 prisoners will double up in cells designed for one, and that 1,000 prisoners will treble up in such cells? The real reason that he can claim, as he does, to have provided 20,000 new places is that he is doubling and trebling up men in single cells.

Jack Straw: There is no dubiety about where those additional places have come from. A large proportion are new, and it is not true that the majority of the contracts were signed and financed when we took office. That is simply incorrect. Some were in a programme, but we had to provide the money, and that has continued. We have continued the policy of the previous Administration of doubling and trebling in cells where possible. The difference, however, is that we have put internal sanitation into virtually all cells, whereas 10 years ago the condition of many prisons across the country, particularly local ones, was scandalous. I remind the hon. and learned Gentleman that when I became Home Secretary just 10 and a half years ago, a large number of places in police cells were being used.
	We may hear from the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) later about the need to increase the prison population. He has talked about prisoners serving their full terms "period", and building as many places "as it takes". I do not know whether he has spoken about that to his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier), who has called consistently for a reduction in the prison population since he came into the House, and made that point again at column 1459 on 11 July.

Philip Davies: Will the Secretary of State give way?

Jack Straw: In a moment.
	Prison is an essential component of the criminal justice system, but no one believes that it should be the only component. The punishment should fit the crime. If the offence warrants a community penalty or fine, a community penalty or fine should be handed down. Part 2 of the Bill introduces a range of measures to ensure proportionality in sentencing. There is clear evidence—it is counter-intuitive, but it is there—that suspended sentences are being used for summary-only, less serious offences, which might previously have attracted a community order. The idea of suspended sentences was that they should be used as an alternative to immediate custody, not as an alternative to community sentences. In our judgment, it is therefore right to confine the option of a suspended sentence order to more serious, indictable-only or either-way offences.

Philip Davies: Does the Secretary of State accept that it is blindingly obvious that the more criminals who are locked up in prison, the fewer criminals there are out on the streets committing crimes? Does he accept that for every 1,000 crimes committed in this country only 13 people go to prison, compared with more than 20 in Europe, and more than 100 in America, and that we have a very low prison population? Does he not recognise that many people in this country are sick to the back-teeth of prisoners being let out early, and want prisoners to serve the sentence handed down by the courts in full?

Jack Straw: Would that that were the case. There is no doubt that the additional places that we have provided, and will continue to provide—at twice the rate of the Administration whom the hon. Gentleman supported —have contributed to the fact that, whereas between 1979 and 1997 crime doubled, since 1997 crime has gone down by at least 35 per cent. on whatever measure one wishes to use, including under the British crime survey. Similar reductions in violent crime have also taken place. I invite him to look at that study, which was done entirely independently.

David Davies: Will the Secretary of State give way?

Jack Straw: No, I am answering an intervention from the hon. Gentleman's colleague.
	The hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) needs to examine two things. First, longer-term sentences work to reduce offending, but shorter-term sentences, which have always and will always exist, often have a fairly high reoffending rate, regardless of whether the sentence is 18 days longer or shorter. We are increasing the number of prison places. If he is saying that there should be no reduction for good behaviour, and no incentive for prisoners to behave themselves, and that we should return to the lunacy that the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) tried to put through the House between 1996 and 1997—he utterly failed and had to withdraw his own shambles—as the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs proposes, that would involve an increase of 60,000 places— [Interruption.] He says, "Hear, hear." That is a further commitment. It would be at a cost of £8 billion in building costs and £2 billion in running costs. Let the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs spell out that that is now his party's proposal.
	Secondly, we should look at the experience in the United States. We have locked up about 145 per 100,000 people, which is the highest level in Europe. Proportionate to its population, the United States has five times that number locked up. The Opposition propose that this country should have 700 prisons and 400,000 people locked up, which is the consequence— [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs is now laughing. That is the consequence of praying in aid the example of the United States. The United States has 2.2 million people locked up. Has it cut violent crime? Has it reduced its murder rate? No, it is still four times that in this country. We have just had another example of a mass gun killing on the streets of an otherwise peaceful community in Wisconsin. The Opposition ought to think about that before they blather away on the issue.
	In the case of recalls, offenders who breach the terms of their licence are recalled to prison and kept there for as long as they present a danger to the public. That will not change, but many of the 11,000 offenders who are now recalled to prison each year are not in that category. Part 2 of the Bill provides for non-dangerous offenders to be recalled for a fixed 28-day period.
	A fourth example of the ever-changing circumstances to which we have to respond is contained in part 2 of the Bill. The criminal law is drafted with great care, but sometimes its specific wording can trap victims and sentencers alike into facing unintended and unacceptable consequences. Right hon. and hon. Members will remember the outcry caused by the Sweeney case last year. Sweeney's was a truly horrific crime, but because of the sentencing rules, the learned judge in the case had to reduce the minimum term of 18 years to a sentence of just less than six years. No criticism can or should be made against the learned judge involved. He was applying the law in that case.
	Some of the reduction was due to guidance on discounts for early guilty pleas, which has now been revised by the Sentencing Guidelines Council. However, there is a broader point on discounts in such exceptional cases, which we want to address in the Bill. We propose to give judges the discretion when they believe that the offence is sufficiently serious to set the sentence that they see fit and not to have to halve the determinate sentence. In addition to that, where offenders are re-sentenced to an indeterminate sentence following an appeal by the Attorney-General, they should not as of right benefit from any sentence discount. We have already abolished discounts in respect of murder cases, but the Bill extends that to all life and indeterminate sentences.

Alan Beith: In welcoming that return of a degree of judicial discretion, may I also remind the Lord Chancellor of another unintended consequence, which concerns indeterminate sentences for public protection? So large is the number of summary offences and relatively short-sentence offences involved that the Parole Board cannot possibly process the cases within the time limit required. Is that not another unintended consequence that needs to be put right?

Jack Straw: I am concerned about that—I am coming before the right hon. Gentleman's Select Committee tomorrow and shall no doubt be examined in detail about the operation. It is not satisfactory and has led to getting on for 400 tariff-expired IPP—imprisonment for public protection—prisoners still serving their sentences, while only 11 so far have been released. That is not acceptable. We are working hard to cut the number of tariff-expired prisoners in that situation.
	In the past 10 years we have developed much better tools for dealing with sex offenders, not least with sex offender orders. We now wish to build on that experience. Part 8 of the Bill provides for violent offender orders, giving police another tool to manage the risks posed by the most dangerous and violent offenders. Those subject to such orders will be required to register with the police and will be subject to other prohibitions and restrictions. Breach of an order will be punishable by up to five years in prison.

Sally Keeble: My right hon. Friend seems to have jumped over part 4, in which I am particularly interested, which deals with the ombudsman. I do not see any reference to institutions for children or young people. Does he intend to make the ombudsman process open to children and young people in institutions or does he intend to strengthen the inspection or appeal regimes for young offenders?

Jack Straw: That issue is not currently covered either by the ombudsman or by the statutory arrangements that we propose to put in place through the Bill. I am happy to consider the matter, but those arrangements are currently covered by other inspection and inquiry procedures.
	In part 3 of the Bill we seek to recalibrate a little the test for quashing convictions in favour of the victim, not the offender. In any democratic country—the rule of law is a fundamental precondition for that description—there are two tests for the justice system. First, was the person guilty? Secondly, was the process followed in establishing that guilt fair and acceptable in a civilised society? Both of those tests are of equal importance. They lie behind the profound truth that justice must not only be done, but be seen to be done. Without them, confidence in the justice system would be significantly undermined. Yet adherence to those tests should not in turn undermine the very principles that they seek to protect.
	Within the boundaries of fairness and equity set by the need to follow proper procedures, there should be scope for an approach that allows the Court of Appeal, when it is convinced of the offender's guilt and is sure that procedural impropriety in the case has not led to injustice, to uphold the original conviction. Equally, we cannot and should not sanction conduct by agencies of the state that would egregiously degrade the rule of law. It must be open to the Court of Appeal in exceptionally serious cases of abuse of process to quash the conviction, even where the court is satisfied as to the appellant's guilt or his or her guilt is not an issue in the appeal, as is more usual.
	Earlier this year my right hon. Friends the former Lord Chancellor, the Home Secretary and the Attorney-General published a detailed consultation paper on the issue. Many responses were received, a summary of which is published today. Almost all the responses were critical of the drafting contained in clause 26. I can therefore tell the House that I am comprehensively reviewing the drafting of clause 26 as it is currently written. I intend to table a replacement, which I hope will meet the major criticisms made and the policy objective behind the clause.
	The consultation has, however, brought out a separate issue: the need to clarify the law, so that when the Court of Appeal is dealing with an appeal relating to a conviction of many years standing, typically on a referral by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, it may do so on the basis of the law at the time of conviction. I shall bring forward amendments to cover that proposal too, which is sought by practitioners.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: Briefly, I welcome my right hon. Friend's approach to clause 26 and to what appeared to be an attack on the Court of Appeal's right to allow appeals and to strike down convictions in cases of gross abuse of process. I know that he will take the view that there must be something in the new clause to allow the Court of Appeal to continue to do that in such circumstances.

Jack Straw: I am grateful for the interest that my hon. and learned Friend has taken in the matter. When we bring forward the replacement I hope that it will meet the concerns expressed on both sides of the House and those of practitioners. He is absolutely right. It is true that in most cases, although not in all, where there has been not so much an abuse of process as an error of process, which might have been relatively serious but which still does not affect the justice of leaving a conviction to stand, the Court of Appeal will do that or will sometimes order a retrial.
	However, I certainly accept that there are some examples—we can all think of them—where the abuse of process has been so outrageous that it would break the principle of the rule of law for the conviction to stand. Although that means that a guilty person has to walk free, I am afraid that that is the price we all have to pay if there is an abuse by agencies of the state. It is wholly intolerable in any democracy that the ends should justify the means. Achieving the right balance is what we all seek to do. I applaud the manner in which the Court of Appeal has sought to do that under the existing law, but I think that everybody accepts that the law should be recalibrated a little to improve matters.

David Howarth: I, too, welcome the Secretary of State's announcement of an intention to review clause 26. Just to be absolutely clear about what he just said, is he saying that the case of Mullen, which is the most well known of such cases, should still be decided the way it was?

Jack Straw: Mullen was guilty on the facts of the serious terrorism charges against him, but there had been an egregious abuse of process. Instead of being extradited from Zimbabwe, as he easily could have been, he was subject to what is now euphemistically called extraordinary rendition by the Americans, which is otherwise known as being kidnapped, through co-operation between the local security agencies and ours, bundled on a plane and brought into the jurisdiction that way. Either we have an extradition process or we do not. Although we have all had to hold our nose over that case, it was right and proper of the courts to order his release in those circumstances.
	I come to an issue that was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant)— [ Interruption ]—who is still present in spirit, if not in his place. The Government have a strong record of promoting equality and of tackling discrimination and bigotry in all its guises. We have strengthened the sentencing framework, so that sentences can be increased where race, religion, disability or sexual orientation are aggravating factors. We have also introduced legislation to outlaw the stirring up of religious hatred, as my hon. Friend reminded the House. We have received many representations on the matter, and I am pleased to say that we will propose a further step to strengthen the protection afforded to homosexual people. It is a measure of how far we have come as a society in the last 10 years that we are all now appalled by hatred and invective directed against gay people, and it is now time for the law to recognise the feeling of the public. In Committee, we will table an amendment to extend the offence of incitement to racial hatred to cover hatred against persons on the basis of their sexuality. Homophobic abuse, lyrics and literature are every bit as abhorrent to those concerned as material inciting hatred based on race or religion, and have no place in our communities.

John Redwood: Like the Secretary of State, I have no time for abuse of any kind, or for violence of the sort that he wishes to outlaw. However, in my constituency I am receiving a number of representations from the Christian community, as, I am sure, are other Members. Will the right hon. Gentleman reassure the House that he will take full account of the wish to preserve freedom of speech for those expressing Christian views?

Jack Straw: Yes. I too have received such representations. As with the provisions on incitement to religious hatred, we must be extremely careful to ensure that the law strikes a proper balance. I promise the right hon. Gentleman that my right hon. Friend the Minister of State, other Ministers and I are seeking to ensure that the drafting achieves that, and I hope it will then be examined very carefully in this House and in the other place to ensure that such a balance exists.

Evan Harris: I join the Secretary of State in calling for the creation of such an offence—that is the manifesto position of my party—but as one who was involved in the wording of the religious hatred provisions that now exist, may I commend to him the wording on which the House settled in that context? I believe that, on the whole, it strikes the right balance between freedom of speech, ensuring that the offence must be intentional, and covering threatening language only.

Jack Straw: The hon. Gentleman has given wise counsel. The starting point for the drafting of this measure is certainly the parallel example of the current provisions in respect of religious hatred.

Andrew MacKinlay: I welcome the Lord Chancellor's announcement. Can he assure us that the provision will cover Northern Ireland?

Jack Straw: It already does. I am very pleased to be in close association with my hon. Friend on this occasion, and to be able to give him complete and utter satisfaction.

David Hanson: I took the measure through the House.

Jack Straw: My right hon. Friend the Minister took it through the House himself.
	Of course concerns were expressed in Northern Ireland—one or two. The religious communities there are quite strong. However, I think that everyone is now reasonably relaxed about this important protection for a minority.
	I want to hear views from the House, and from outside organisations, on whether the offence could or should be extended to cover hatred against transgender and disabled people. I cannot give commitments until I have seen the arguments—this is a complicated area—but I am ready to consider amendments to that end if a case can be made.
	The whole House is agreed that we must do all that we can to provide the maximum protection for our children from predatory sex offenders. Members will recall that in June the Government announced the conclusions of a review on protecting children from sex offenders. A key action arising from that was to give responsible authorities that are within the multi-agency public protection arrangements—known by the acronym MAPPA—a positive duty to disclose information about convicted sex offenders to the public. We now propose to insert an amendment in the Bill which will do just that. We believe that there should be a presumption of disclosure to members of the public when MAPPA authorities consider that an offender presents a risk of serious harm to children.
	Those who are victims of criminal acts and who seek to protect themselves or their communities should be treated with respect by the criminal justice system. There can be no justice in a system that makes the victim the criminal. I know that this issue has been the subject of some intense contributions in the House, including private Members' Bills from Opposition Members. As I announced outside the House a couple of weeks ago, I want to look again at the law on self-defence to ensure that the focus is correct, and that those who act proportionately are not treated like criminals. My aim is to complete the review in time for the issue to be addressed in the Bill.
	The Bill contains, in part 11, one immigration provision. The freedoms that we enjoy in this country should never be abused. The new special immigration status will ensure that foreign criminals and terrorists who cannot be deported cannot expect a settled status in this country.

Philip Hollobone: Given that this is called the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill, is it not disappointing that it contains no provisions to close the loophole whereby if illegal immigrants are apprehended by the police, the police are directed by the Home Office to dispatch those people so that they can proceed under their own steam to immigration centres in either Liverpool or Croydon? In Northamptonshire recently, 16 illegal immigrants were detained by the police but then released to make their own way to the immigration centres. Local people were rightly outraged, and they will be outraged that the Bill contains no provisions to correct the position.

Jack Straw: I understand the concern that the hon. Gentleman has raised, but the issue is better addressed in the UK Borders Bill, which relates to the powers of the immigration authorities and which is currently before Parliament. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will find an opportunity to debate the issue, and to ensure that he is given a proper answer. I will take up what he said with my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary.

Lynne Jones: I am concerned that my right hon. Friend has not mentioned proposals to amend the Street Offences Act 1959. I want to record my disappointment that there has been no opportunity for a comprehensive review of the laws on prostitution. What happened to the proposal in the 2006 White Paper to amend the definition of a brothel to allow two or three individuals to work together?

Jack Straw: I do not know the precise answer to that question. I shall allow my right hon. Friend the Minister to deal with it when he winds up the debate.

Several hon. Members: rose —

Jack Straw: I want to end my speech now.
	I think that the provisions in the Bill are sensible. We are always open to suggestions on measures such as this, and although there may not have been the comprehensive review for which my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Lynne Jones) has called, there has certainly been a significant and substantial review of the law in this area. I think that even what are seen as relatively minor changes ending the way in which prostitutes are described as "common prostitutes" rather than as persons, in an attempt to dehumanise people who deserve our sympathy as much as our condemnation—if not more—represent a sensible way of proceeding. However, if suggestions are made that we can accommodate in the Bill, we shall seek to do so.
	I have not been able to deal with the whole Bill, because I was very conscious that we had begun two hours later than is normal and that other Members would wish to speak in this foreshortened debate, but I hope very much that the Bill is given an unopposed Second Reading. If that happens, it will at least mean that Opposition Members have gradually learnt something as they enter their 11th year of opposition. The range of issues on which they have opposed measures for the sake of it has been extraordinary, and removes from them any possibility of not just claiming to talk tough—which they do all the time—but claiming that they will act tough when it comes to criminal and antisocial behaviour.
	Meanwhile, there is always room for people to be converted and to see the light. I look forward to hearing, in a second, the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs applaud the fact that whereas crime doubled under the last Administration, under this Administration—with 20,000 extra prison places and increased investment in the police—crime has been cut, whichever way we look at it.

Nick Herbert: I congratulate the Lord Chancellor on introducing his first criminal justice Bill in his new role. He has a hard act to follow—in fact, he has at least 35 Acts to follow. That is how many pieces of legislation on criminal justice and immigration we have had already from the Government.
	How much this Bill will add to that we will come to debate, but at least we know what it will subtract. Part 1 will scrap the plethora of orders introduced by the Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000, including the action plan order, the attendance centre order, the curfew order, the exclusion order, the supervision order and the youth community order—the Government's own provisions and they lasted seven years.
	Clause 10 will repeal section 189 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 and remove the right of magistrates to suspend jail sentences. That provision lasted just four years. However, this Bill goes further than repealing the Government's recent laws. It repeals Bills that have not even been passed. Schedule 23 will repeal schedule 21 of the Legal Services Bill, which has not even been passed yet and which we will consider next Monday. The Lord Chancellor already wants to repeal it—he has told us today that he is already reviewing clause 26 in relation to criminal appeals in this Bill.
	What a farce. Not only does the Bill repeal the Government's own legislation but it repeals parts of Acts that have not yet been fully implemented. Rather than curtailing magistrates sentencing powers in clause 10 of this Bill, perhaps the Lord Chancellor could implement section 154 of the Criminal Justice Act and give magistrates the power to sentence offenders to a year in jail. That was what Labour promised. They legislated for it and under the last Home Secretary they broke that promise.

Jack Straw: The hon. Gentleman is making a rather forced point about clause 26. Can he explain what his point is? We put out a consultation paper. There was consultation on it. The particular drafting of the clause did not find favour. Is he therefore condemning us for listening to the consultation? If not, what is his point?

Nick Herbert: The point is quite straightforward: it is a good idea to do the consultation before one legislates. That is the purpose of it. It is certainly the case that the majority of respondents to the Government's consultation paper opposed that provision. In fact, the Government said that a majority of the legal correspondents, as they are called, opposed it. Let us have a look at how many other respondents there were. The legal correspondents included a number of important bodies, including members of the judiciary, the Criminal Appeal Lawyers Association and the Criminal Bar Association; I could go on. The members of the public, and we do not know what their views were, included someone called Trev. The majority of the respondents, as the Government have said themselves, have rejected the provision. The question is why the Government have introduced a criminal justice Bill before the end of the Session, which they intend to carry over—they originally intended to debate it in June—when they have not consulted properly on the measures in it. That was the point that I was seeking to make.

Stephen Hesford: Did the hon. Gentleman take part in the consultation exercise on quashing convictions—yes or no?

Nick Herbert: We did not take part in the consultation exercise. I do not think that, with the number of eminent legal authorities that responded, it was necessary for us to do so. There has been an overwhelming rejection of the proposals in the consultation paper.
	This is a typical Christmas tree Bill where the Government are certain that they wish to legislate about something but are not sure what. We see the same with the Government's proposals in relation to the Flanagan report. The Lord Chancellor said nothing about that. Originally, the Prime Minister said that this Bill was to provide the vehicle for measures relating to police efficiency that would arise as a result of the Flanagan report. Why did not the Lord Chancellor tell us what those measures will be?

Jack Straw: rose—

Nick Herbert: Perhaps he can tell us now.

Jack Straw: I will tell the hon. Gentleman why I did not talk about that. I thought that Madam Deputy Speaker might rule me out of order if I started to talk about things that were not in the Bill, rather than about things that were in it.

Nick Herbert: The Lord Chancellor talked incessantly about things that were not in the Bill. The Prime Minister, when he talked about the pre-legislative programme, specifically said that, if Flanagan recommended measures that would improve police efficiency, they would be added to this Bill. As a result of the Flanagan review of police efficiency, can the Lord Chancellor now tell us what measures will be brought forward in amendments to the Bill? The Government have had the interim report, but they are unable to tell us what measures may be added to the Bill in later amendments.

Jack Straw: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way but it seems blindingly obvious. We only got the Flanagan report about three weeks ago. It was an interim report. We have not had the final report, which is not due till the new year. The chances of any provision from that being included in this Bill are extremely unlikely.

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. May I remind all right hon. and hon. Members that we are discussing the Bill that is currently before the House?

Nick Herbert: Indeed. Part of the problem is that we do not yet know what will be in the Bill. Although the Prime Minister has promised legislation in relation to policing, we have no idea what that legislation will be.
	Since the Government came to power, more than 3,000 new offences have been created, 430 of them by the Home Office. The creation of 3,000 new offences works out at a new offence for almost every day that Labour has been in power, and it is twice the rate seen under the two previous Conservative Administrations. I have lost count of the number of new offences in this Bill.  The Guardian reports that it is 19. Perhaps one of the Ministers sitting on the Government Benches could do something useful, count them and let us know at the end of the debate. The Bill was published on the eve of the departure of Tony Blair, the previous Prime Minister, from Downing street. There could be no more fitting tribute to him or to the legislative incontinence that has characterised 10 years of this Government.
	I hesitate to mention ICM's poll in the  News of the World yesterday. I appreciate that it may be in poor taste and that that poll had no impact at all, of course, on the Prime Minister's courageous decision not to call an early general election. However, that poll showed that 63 per cent. of voters in marginal seats think that the Government have done a bad job on law and order, and only 30 per cent. think that they have done a good job. More than half of Labour voters said that the Government had done a bad job. There have been 35 Bills, 3,000 offences have been created, but two thirds of voters say that the Government have done a bad job. Do Ministers by any chance think that those facts are related? Perhaps they should listen to the Law Society, which said in a briefing on the Bill that it
	"strongly believes that the criminal justice system is suffering from 'change fatigue', and that new legislation, particularly that creating additional criminal offences or alternative ways of dealing with people who have re-offended, can be counterproductive if it unnecessarily results in the wastage of scarce resources".

David Hanson: Can the hon. Gentleman tell me whether he is going to vote against the Bill this evening?

Nick Herbert: I am afraid the Minister of State will have to wait and see, if he can bear the tension.
	Alongside the successive criminal justice Bills, we have seen a succession of sentencing reviews and a constantly shifting sentencing framework. There are other sentencing reviews now in train that the Bill does not take into account, including the review on indeterminate sentences, which the Lord Chancellor has announced, but has not confirmed to the House.
	Let us dwell briefly on the elements of the Bill that we can agree on. In relation to the pornography offences, we support the principle of clause 64, which implements measures to combat possession of images that are both extreme and pornographic. We also support the principle behind clause 67, which relates to the penalties applied for possession of extreme pornographic images, and clauses 68 and 69 relating to indecent photographs of children. As usual, we will need to look at the drafting, but the whole House will share a determination to protect children from paedophilia and society from images that could provoke violence. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford), who has worked tirelessly to promote more robust action in relation to those issues.
	We also support the principle of clauses 104 to 106 regarding a new offence of causing nuisance or disturbance on NHS premises and the powers to remove offenders from hospital premises. However, given that that measure will not apply to patients who are violent towards NHS staff, we will have to look in due course at how effective that will be in practice and whether it affords nurses and other NHS personnel the protection that the whole House believes they deserve.
	We also support the creation of the prisons commissioner, so long as the commissioner has the power to recommend criminal sanctions akin to those in the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 against the Prison Service and other state agencies that are charged with the custody of individuals, and so long as his appointment is not a ground for delaying the implementation of the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act.
	We will look carefully at the proposed offence of inciting homophobic hatred because clearly there are important considerations striking the right balance between protecting free speech and a desire to protect gay people from hatred. We will debate the provisions in Committee once we have seen them.
	The core purpose and effect of the Bill is confused; will the Bill send fewer people to prison or more people? Clause 16 proposes to limit recalls to prison to 28 days, provided the Secretary of State is satisfied that the prisoner will not present a risk of serious harm on release. The Government say that the measure will save 1,000 prison places, but we are opposed to it in principle. We want a more effective process for recalls, but we believe that offenders who breach their conditions should expect to return to prison to serve out the rest of their sentence.
	The Bill also abolishes the power of magistrates to suspend custodial sentences, and again we oppose this interference with judicial discretion. The crimes in question have passed the custody threshold. Before even considering a suspended sentence, the magistrate must decide that a final probation would be insufficient. If they cannot suspend the sentence, they will have to jail the offender.
	There is another concern; a provision that is intended by the Government to reduce the prison population could have the opposite effect. The National Association of Probation Officers has warned that the abolition of the power is justified on the grounds that some magistrates use it instead of fines or unpaid work. Nevertheless, there is a real risk that many magistrates will impose custody instead of suspension and the association goes on to predict that it will increase the prison population by 1,000.

Philip Davies: My hon. Friend is making a typically powerful case. Does he agree that the Bill has more to do with digging the Government out of a hole of their own making—not providing enough prison places—rather than their doing the right thing that our constituents would like to see?

Nick Herbert: I strongly agree. The prisons crisis, to which I shall refer, is one entirely of the Government's own making; for 10 years they have ignored the warnings that the rise in the prison population would outstrip the provision of prison places. The Bill is an inadequate response to that crisis and my hon. Friend is absolutely right. On the one hand, we have measures that the Government claim are intended to reduce the prison population—partly in response to the prison overcrowding crisis—but which many experts are claiming will increase the prison population. On the other, we have measures that the Government admit will increase the prison population.
	According to the National Association of Probation Officers, the violent offender order, to which I shall return shortly, will add at least 4,000 to the prison population. The Government's own regulatory impact assessment says that breaches of the violent offender orders will have an impact equivalent to approximately 20 places a year. There is an extraordinary discrepancy between these two figures. We need to bear in mind that the Government failed woefully to predict the impact of their own indeterminate sentences.
	During the Committee stage of the Criminal Justice Bill 2003, the right hon. Member for Leeds, Central (Hilary Benn) predicted that indeterminate sentences would require an additional 900 prison places. The number of people in prison serving indeterminate sentences since then is already at two and a half times that number. In April this year, the figure was at over 2,500, just two years after that sentence was introduced. The Prison Reform Trust has estimated that 12,000 people will be serving indeterminate sentences for public protection by 2012. The gaping hole that is not filled by the Bill and the issue that the Lord Chancellor signally failed to address is that the prisons are full, to bursting point. On Friday, we saw prison numbers rise for the second successive week to a record high.
	The Government's policy of early release—under which 25,000 criminals are to be released 18 days early on to our streets, under which 6,000 criminals have so far been released, 1,000 of whom were violent offenders and under which many of those have gone on to commit offences while released—has saved only 1,200 prison places. It has been a failure.

William Cash: On foreign criminals who require deportation, does my hon. Friend agree that another gaping hole in the Bill is set out in the explanatory notes relating to the Human Rights Act? Unless the Human Rights Act is repealed, a coach and horses will be driven through the Bill in relation to such matters. In respect of the framework decisions applying European Community law, the best thing to do would be to include in the Bill a provision that says "notwithstanding the European Communities Act 1972 and the Human Rights Act 1998" and then to legislate. We could then bring these important decisions back to the House on behalf of the electorate, something that the Government are refusing to do. They are in fact making it worse under the absurd reform treaty, which is completely constitutional.

Nick Herbert: I agree. That is another gaping hole at the heart of the Bill and I will turn to that issue in a second.
	Some 17,000 prisoners are now doubling up in cells, twice as many as when the Government came to power. Nearly a quarter of the entire prison population is housed in cells designed for one fewer person. We have just seen the obscenity in the 21st century of a wing of a prison in this country closed because of sewage and rat infestation. There has been a huge increase in suicides in our prisons and, contrary to the Minister of State's claim, that increase in prison suicides this year far outstrips the rise in the jail population. The Government's own figures show that suicides are far more likely in overcrowded jails and that an inadequate number of new prison places will not keep pace with the rising custodial population.
	There needs to be proper accountability for deaths in custody and the fact that the Government resisted their own corporate manslaughter legislation in relation to prisons and police cells—eventually only accepting it with a delay of years—demonstrates that Ministers know there is a serious problem but have been unwilling to take the steps to deal with it.
	These are the issues that we will address when we come to consider a provision in the Bill that we welcome—the appointment of a commissioner for offender management and prisons. The Government, frankly, have simply stood by and watched as the prisons have filled up. On 24 July, the Minister of State conceded that
	"it is clear that a gap remains between the number of new places and the forecasted rise in the prison population."—[ Official Report, 24 July 2007; Vol. 463, c. 755.]
	They know there is gap but they are refusing to tell us what they are going to do about it and they are producing a Bill that will increase the prison population in spite of that.
	The Ministry of Justice's median projections of future prison population show that there will be 12,370 new prisoners by 2012, but only 9,500 new prison places by the same date. That is a gap of 3,000. If all of the measures in the Bill were implemented, those measures increasing the prison population would, on the Government's own estimate—it is wildly behind the forecasts of the National Association of Probation Officers—add 49. Those that would reduce the prison population would subtract 1,100. According to the Government's own figures there remains a serious gap in the projected prison population that is not addressed by the Bill, even on its own terms.
	We need a coherent strategy to address the crisis, but what we get is political grandstanding. Part 11 of the Bill concerns itself with foreigners who commit crimes in Britain. On 25 July, the Prime Minister told  The Sun: 
	"If you commit a crime you will be deported. You play by the rules or you face the consequences...I'm not prepared to tolerate a situation where we have people breaking the rules in our country when we cannot act."
	Then, two weeks ago in Brighton, the Prime Minister said:
	"But let me be clear: any newcomer to Britain who is caught selling drugs or using guns will be thrown out. No one who sells drugs to our children or uses guns has the right to stay in our country."
	However, today in his press conference the Prime Minister made it clear that he was talking only about newcomers to this country.
	First, we were told that all foreign criminals would have to be deported, then we were told that it would be drug dealers or gun criminals, and now the Prime Minister confirms that he is in fact talking only about people who have yet to visit this country. The Prime Minister simply does not understand the damage that that kind of spin has done to politics and his own Government—not only over the past 10 years, but, specifically, in the last two weeks.
	The Prime Minister knows that he cannot remove thousands of foreign criminals from our country, not least because Labour's own laws prevent it. He could not even deport the murderer of Philip Lawrence because of an EU directive, which the Lord Chancellor negotiated, and the Human Rights Act, which the Lord Chancellor introduced. That is why we say that one of the major flaws in relation to this Bill, which is intended to deal with the issue of foreign prisoners in our country, is the HRA itself. That is why we have said that the HRA should be scrapped, and replaced by a British Bill of Rights and responsibilities that would enable us to take the necessary action against, for instance, those who commit acts of terrorism.

Evan Harris: Will the hon. Gentleman clarify whether it is his intention to resile from the European convention on human rights, and if not, what would be achieved, except in terms of slowness of justice, of simply repealing the HRA, which puts the European convention into UK law? Is it the hon. Gentleman's intention to resile from the ECHR?

Nick Herbert: No, it is not our intention to resile from the ECHR. It is not us who proposed that. The former Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (John Reid), proposed that—he did so in this House on 24 May. As the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) knows perfectly well, the argument is that if we were to have our own British Bill of Rights, the convention would be reinterpreted accordingly and the margin of appreciation would allow us to take more action against those who threaten our country.

Jack Straw: I must say that the hon. Gentleman has a lot of learning to do on the margin of appreciation and Strasbourg. He is implying that in the Chindamo case—he is still locked up, and will, I think, remain so for quite some period to come—had there been a new Bill of Rights and responsibilities all the problems of getting tribunal agreement to deport him would have disappeared. At the same time, the hon. Gentleman is blaming an EU directive. If he reads the tribunal judgment, he will see that the ECHR was a subsidiary and minor issue, and that the key issue was to do with EU directives that had been extant for decades although they were consolidated and updated to similar effect in 2006. Is the hon. Gentleman therefore saying that those provisions, which are binding in EU law, would also be abrogated by a future Conservative Administration?

Nick Herbert: Let me make two points to the right hon. Gentleman. First, his successor the aforementioned former Home Secretary reaffirmed as recently as last month that he thinks that the HRA is an impediment to our ability to deal with terrorism. Secondly, the right hon. Gentleman correctly refers to the directive in the Chindamo case, but he negotiated it and it was an impediment to removing Chindamo not to some country where he might be tortured but to a country in the EU. He should have ensured in negotiating that directive that we could deal with people whom we do not wish to remain in this country because they have committed serious offences—in this case, a brutal murder. After all, the Prime Minister has promised that; he has told the country that he would ensure that any foreigner committing an offence would be removed from this country. If the Lord Chancellor is now saying that that is not possible, perhaps he would like to explain to the Prime Minister why he is wrong.

William Cash: Does my hon. Friend agree that the crucial question—the test—is whether our judiciary will obey legislation from Westminster or from Europe in matters that affect vital national interests? It is clear from his excellent speech that my hon. Friend has understood the nature of the problem, and I believe that the margin of appreciation, as he put it, will be appreciated by the Lord Chancellor—if I can use that term because I am not sure whether the right hon. Gentleman is the Lord Chancellor or the Secretary of State for Justice. Perhaps he can enlighten us on that.

Nick Herbert: Other jurisdictions have a greater ability to deal with such matters because they have constitutions that frame people's responsibilities as well as their rights and that enable them to deal with terrorist suspects. We should also have that; that is what the former Home Secretary said. That is also what the Prime Minister implied when he said we should have the ability to deal with such issues. However, the reality is that, behind the spin, it is clear that the Government have no intention whatsoever of moving on this issue.
	Let us look at another issue in relation to this Bill on which the Government have been grandstanding. The Minister of State, the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr. Hanson), said about this Bill in a news release of 26 June that it builds on reforms
	"to rebalance the system in favour of the victim and the law-abiding majority",
	to which I say, "Hear, hear." The Lord Chancellor said two weeks ago that he would review the law to ensure that people can defend themselves from attack without fear of prosecution, but the right hon. Gentleman was this Government's first Home Secretary and in four years he did nothing. On the "Today" radio programme he gave a deeply unconvincing explanation of why that was:
	"Indeed and let me say that I wanted and was very interested in changing the law and...other matters intervened and then I...I was moved on and indeed I wish I had...".
	We repeatedly urged a change in the law so that people could protect themselves from intruders in their homes. The right hon. Gentleman and his party colleagues fought us on that idea year after year. Indeed, in 2000 the right hon. Gentleman dismissed out of hand calls from my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) to give greater protection to home owners who use self-defence against burglars. The last time the Government grabbed a headline by signalling a change in the law they reneged on it within weeks.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Nick Herbert: In a moment. That is the worst kind of cynical politics, and it is exactly what turns people off.
	Nevertheless, let us take the Lord Chancellor at his word. He promised an
	"urgent review of the law on self defence...aimed at ensuring that those who seek to protect themselves, their loved ones and their homes, as well as other citizens, have confidence that the law is on their side."
	So I can tell the Lord Chancellor that when the Bill is in Committee we will re-table the provisions for which we have fought for years to give that greater protection to people who seek to protect themselves against burglars. I would be delighted if the Lord Chancellor would intervene on me now to say whether, in view of what he said at the Labour party conference, he will support that amendment. Go on, have a go, Jack.

Jack Straw: I am delighted to respond. I would have thought that the hon. Gentleman would be pleased that the matter has been further considered. Let me say that I never dismiss out of hand suggestions for changes in the law on this issue, but there were good reasons why I judged that it was not possible to proceed in 2000.
	The proposals contained in two private Members' Bills need some changes in their wording, and I will be happy to sit down with the promoters of those Bills—I was intending to do so—as part of the consultation process, with a view to tabling amendments on Report and to see whether we can reach a consensus. The specific wording, which I have carefully examined, does not quite meet the need, but I am always open to argument.

Nick Herbert: Let me tell the Lord Chancellor that there will be no problem reaching agreement if he can persuade himself and his colleagues that the law needs to be changed, but the fact is that we have been arguing for this for the past 10 years and he and his colleagues have consistently argued against it. We look forward to the proposals which he now suggests he will bring forward in amendments to this Bill. We will hold him to the words that he used when he talked about the need to protect those who defend themselves.
	Let us look at what should have been in this Bill. This is a Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill—what relation it bears to a UK Borders Bill that, in some respects, covers much of the same territory is another debate—but the one thing that the vast majority clearly want is not in here: a limit on economic immigration. We have said that we want the right people and the right number of people coming to Britain, which is why our policy is that there should be an annual limit on the number of economic migrations to the UK. However, we have another immigration Bill that does not set that limit.
	We have said that there should be a policy of honesty in sentencing. The fight against crime depends on integrity in the criminal justice system and on courts that deliver swift, effective justice, with punishments appropriate to the crime and the criminal. In the Criminal Justice Act 2003, the Government introduced automatic release on licence halfway through the sentence for all determinate sentences of longer than 12 months. Combined with the early release scheme, this means that an offender sentenced to a year in jail is usually out after little more than five months. The policy amounts to a deliberate dishonesty. It damages the trust that victims and wider society place in the courts, and it encourages criminals to hold the system in contempt.
	If this were our Bill, we would introduce provisions to restore honesty in sentencing, in order to reassure victims and leave criminals in no doubt that justice is done. We would ensure that convicted criminals served the full sentence handed down to them by the judge. Our purpose in this respect is not to increase the length of sentences; rather, we believe that judges should hand down minimum, as well as maximum, sentences, with no possibility of parole until the minimum has been served.

David Hanson: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Nick Herbert: Just wait a second, please. The Lord Chancellor's preposterous suggestion that this policy would increase the prison population by 60,000 is clearly based on the fact that he has not read what we said. Given that we have not said what the minimum and maximum should be, there is no way that he can calculate what the increase in the prison population would be. All that we have had is a series of increasingly fanciful projections from the Lord Chancellor about what the increase in the prison population might be under an alternative Government. One day it is 60,000; another day it is 320,000. Instead of spinning in this way, he should address the serious overcrowding problem in his jails; he has to decide what he is going to do about that. It seems that this Government have learned nothing from the last week—from the spin that has so damaged them.

David Hanson: I am interested in what the hon. Gentleman is saying. I would really like to know what his assessment is of the extra prison places required in the event of individuals serving a full sentence. It is clearly not possible to have a discounted sentence under current regulations and not add to the prison population.

Nick Herbert: We have made it clear that the purpose of the policy is to introduce honesty in sentencing. The Government seem to have no understanding of the damage that is done and the crisis in public confidence that is engendered when people serve very short prison sentences, particularly when the victims have heard in court that the sentence would be handed down in full. It amounts to an institutional lie, and it needs to be dealt with.

David Davies: Will my hon. Friend the shadow Minister accept the good wishes of the many victims of crime I know who have formed an organisation called "stop all forms of early release"? They include the parents of murder victims and the rape victim Gabrielle Browne, who publicised her own story in the London Evening Standard because she was so angry that the person who had raped her had been let out of jail early. Does the Minister of State not agree that it is high time that prisoners serve the sentences given to them by the courts? Does he not also agree that this policy would not only save money in the long run, but would save people like Gabrielle Browne from being raped by people who have been let out of prison early?

Nick Herbert: The disgrace of this Government's management of the prison system—

Jack Straw: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Nick Herbert: No; let me answer my hon. Friend first, please. The disgrace of this Government's management of the prison system is not just the overcrowding over which they have presided, their failure to rehabilitate criminals and the consequential rise in recidivism rates, but their willingness to pioneer alternatives to custodial sentences for criminals who simply should not be in receipt of them: violent criminals who have then gone on to commit really serious offences. What do the Government have to say to the victims of these crimes, who have suffered really serious violence at the hands of criminals who should have been in custody, but who were released purely because the Government failed to manage prison places according to their own predictions?

Jack Straw: We are all trying to follow with care what the hon. Gentleman has just committed his party to. Let us take the example that he used of someone who is currently sentenced to 12 months in prison, but who, under the 2003 Act, will normally serve 50 per cent. of that, which is six months. Is the hon. Gentleman saying that, under his proposals, that same prisoner would in future serve 12 months in prison, or six months?

Nick Herbert: We have said that we will fundamentally review sentencing, so that we introduce bracketed sentences with a minimum and a maximum. It will then be for the authorities to decide at what point people are released, between the minimum and the maximum. That introduces honesty in sentencing, because those individuals could not be released until they had completed the minimum term. That is in contrast with this Government, who instituted release at the halfway point of a sentence, and who have also presided over an early release scheme that ensures that 25,000 offenders will be released 18 days early. That is the institutional lie that affects our sentencing and has undermined public confidence in sentencing. It is that which we seek to redress through a policy of honesty in sentencing, so that there is no possibility of parole until the minimum sentence is served.

David Hanson: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Nick Herbert: No. I have dealt with that point enough.
	I want to focus on two other serious omissions from this Bill, the first of which I have already referred to. During the statement of 11 July on the Government's legislative programme, the Prime Minister said:
	"We stand ready to introduce new measures into the Criminal Justice Bill, which will be carried over into the next Session, including measures that come from the review of policing by Sir Ronald Flanagan, which will report later this autumn."—[ Official Report, 11 July 2007; Vol. 462, c. 1451.]
	The Lord Chancellor's response was not adequate in this respect. When the Minister of State responds, perhaps he can tell us which proposals in Sir Ronnie Flanagan's review of policing, which was intended to reduce police bureaucracy, will be carried into the Bill by way of amendments. We would have proposed abolition of the stop form—it takes police officers several minutes to complete, and we regard it as a significant impediment to their ability to interact with the public—and the wholesale reduction of central targets. I doubt very much whether we will see those measures, but the fact is that the Lord Chancellor would not confirm the introduction of any measures on policing, despite the promise that the Prime Minister made as recently as July.
	The other absence from the Bill is any consideration of the impact of the Government's summary justice programme, under which whole swathes of cases have been taken out of the magistrates courts altogether and are now being dealt with by police officers by way of cautions and fixed penalty notices. They are counted as offences brought to justice, even when those notices are not paid. That policy is consistent with an underlying feature of this Bill that has characterised many other criminal justice Bills that this Government have brought before the House: a cavalier approach to the civil liberties that this House should be protecting.
	We have seen proposals for ending the discretion of the Court of Appeal to quash convictions, and the criticism of them by the legal profession, not least the Law Society. In the light of that, the Lord Chancellor has conceded that he will reconsider the drafting of that provision. There are also violent offender orders—the latest in a line of quasi-criminal measures that started with antisocial behaviour orders, and which continued with control orders and serious crime prevention orders. Those orders deliberately blur the line between the criminal and civil law. Their effectiveness—especially in the case of ASBOs, half of which are breached—must raise great concern about whether violent offender orders will be similarly robust. Such orders effectively use the civil law to criminalise people while sidestepping the job of any Government, which is to ensure that they have a legal framework to deal properly with offenders.
	There is also the arbitrary cap on compensation for miscarriages of justice, which is set out in clause 62. Finally in relation to civil liberties, there is a proposal for the extension of conditional cautions to juvenile offenders—conditional cautions under which prosecutors will be able to impose a punishment with no involvement by the judiciary, which is a fundamental breach of the judiciary's role in sentencing people.
	The fundamental problem at the heart of this Christmas tree Bill is that it contains a rag-bag of ineffective measures, including some that are cavalier with the civil liberties that we are here to protect.

Nick Hurd: My hon. Friend talks passionately about the need to re-establish the credibility of the courts. Does he think that the credibility of magistrates courts would be enhanced or undermined by clause 58, which is designed to extend the powers of non-legally qualified staff to conduct trials in magistrates courts?

Nick Herbert: My hon. Friend is right. The Law Society has expressed grave concern about those provisions and we will have to examine them very closely in Committee.

Martin Salter: Has the hon. Gentleman read the report from the Modernisation Committee, which has been backed up by guidance from Mr. Speaker, that Front-Bench speeches on Second Reading should be no longer than 20 minutes plus interventions? The hon. Gentleman has just bored both sides of the House and constrained many hon. Members from representing their constituents in this debate.

Nick Herbert: I have read that recommendation, but the hon. Gentleman should have a word with the Lord Chancellor to stop him intervening on me quite so much. However, he will be relieved to learn that I am coming to an end.
	The Bill is a tired repetition of the same failed approach by the Government. We have had 35 Bills and endless tinkering with the criminal justice process, 3,000 new offences, and civil liberties eroded, but violent crime has doubled and reoffending soared. Of those discharged from prison, 65 per cent. now reoffend, compared with 59 per cent. when this Government came to power. Among young people, the recidivism rate is even higher. Reoffending now accounts for more than half of all crime. That is a measure of the success of this Government in dealing with crime and of their endless criminal justice Bills. We desperately need a new approach, but sadly it is now clear that we will not get it for at least two years.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I remind all right hon. and hon. Members that Mr. Speaker has imposed a time limit of 10 minutes on Back Benchers' speeches.

Keith Vaz: I promise to be briefer than the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert)—obviously, as I am subject to the 10-minute limit—but I am delighted to be asked to participate in the debate. I wish to use the opportunity to raise issues related to the new special immigration status, intermediate sentences and compensation for victims of miscarriages of justice.
	The House has waited 11 months since the Gracious Speech of 15 November last year, when the Government's intention to reform the criminal justice system was first announced. In some respects, it was as a result of the new threat facing this country. Since that time, Britain has faced serious attempted terrorist attacks, on 29 and 30 June this year, which if successful could have killed hundreds of innocent people. As the Prime Minister mentioned in his statement to the House on 25 July, the issue of pre-charge detention periods will be looked at again. That is why I am glad that the Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, will give evidence to the Home Affairs Committee tomorrow.
	The concept of the Bill goes back to the Home Office report "Rebalancing the criminal justice system", published in July 2006 as part of the Government's commitment to better empower our police and probation services to protect the public from violent offenders and antisocial behaviour. Since then, the organisation of the Departments with responsibility for our criminal justice system has undergone significant change. We now have the new Ministry of Justice, headed by my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor, with responsibility for criminal law, sentencing and prison management, and a Home Office dedicated to policing, national security and managing immigration. Of course, the Bill cuts across both Departments.
	Despite the fact that crime has fallen consistently under this Government, there remains a perception, which has been highlighted over the summer, that crime committed by violent and serious offenders is an increasing threat to law-abiding citizens. I know that hon. Members on both sides of the House would wish to express their sincere sympathies with the families of those killed recently in tragic and high profile cases. Rhys Jones was only 11 years old, walking home from a football match, when he was viciously gunned down by a youth on a bicycle. Only last week, Magda Pniewska, a Polish care worker—one of a number of migrant workers supporting our health service—was shot dead in crossfire between two men.
	Such cases are clearly uncommon in British society, which is why they have caused such great revulsion and attracted so much attention. They raise two different issues regarding the management of our criminal justice system. The first is how we prevent people from falling into a life of crime and better support the work of our police service in carrying out effective policing and preventing such crime. The second, which the Bill seeks to address, is how to ensure that our criminal justice system has a serious reputation for properly punishing the most serious, persistent and dangerous offenders. When those crimes are committed by foreign nationals, how do we ensure that they no longer remain a threat to British society?
	It is my strongly held belief that immigration, properly managed, has been a great benefit to this country. Migrant workers have been of great importance in sustaining the longest period of continuous growth this country has witnessed. From the old Commonwealth and now from eastern Europe, workers such as Ms Pniewska are providing the backbone of our health and public services. Without them, Britain would be a less dynamic, less efficient place. That is why I am concerned whenever we see headlines, based on anecdotes, that claim that immigrants have brought crime and violence to our country. Such sensationalism creates real, although largely unwarranted, public anxiety.
	If such headlines are combined with reports that because of our obligations under the European convention on human rights—fanned only this evening by the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash), who is no longer in his place—our Government are powerless to remove foreign criminals, there appears to be a real crisis in the system. The Bill, in clauses 115 to 122, seeks to address those concerns by the creation of a special immigration status. That status would permit the offender to lawfully remain in the UK, but would not grant leave to enter or remain. Once people were designated with the new status, the Government could impose conditions on their residence or employment. I do not object to the purpose of these clauses, but I urge the Government to consider seriously whether the proposals are necessary given the strong concerns that many groups have expressed, with some of which I am in sympathy.
	In managing convicted foreign criminals, I am not sure that it is in the interest of the Home Office to add yet another immigration status for it to manage and cost. I am aware of reports from Justice that the new status would cost another £1.1 million to administer over the next three years. The Bill's criteria for designating individuals with special immigration status are also remarkably broad. The intention of the new status is to target "terrorists and serious criminals", but I am concerned that under the current criteria foreign individuals who pose absolutely no threat to this country would be encompassed by this legislation. That would unnecessarily dilute the Government's rightful concentration on the more serious criminals.
	I also ask the Government to look closely at the Bill's power to impose restrictive conditions on those with special immigration status. I would welcome the Minister's providing more detail on what types of condition could be imposed.
	At the top of the public's agenda is the issue of sentencing and sentencing guidelines. Based on what the Lord Chancellor has said this evening, I very much hope that when he gives evidence tomorrow to the Select Committee on Constitutional Affairs he will outline the further steps he intends to take on the issue of intermediate sentences.
	Finally, I want to address the provisions on compensation for individuals who have been the victim of a miscarriage of justice. On 24 March 1986, my constituent, Malde Modwadia, was wrongfully convicted of obtaining property by deception. When that conviction was quashed under section 133(4) of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, he applied for an assessment in respect of loss of income and the compensation due to him for false arrest and conviction. Under the Bill's proposals, there will be a cap on the amount of compensation granted to people who have been the victim of a miscarriage of justice. It is extremely important that we look carefully at those provisions, because when a person has been in prison for as long as my constituent, who actually lost his status as a doctor as a result of wrongful conviction, they should be properly compensated.
	In conclusion, I warmly welcome the Bill as a step towards a safer society. The Government have achieved much in the fight against crime and although there is disagreement between the Library, which says that 60 criminal justice Bills have been passed, the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs, who says that the number is 35, and the Lord Chancellor who says that 30 Bills altering our criminal justice system have been passed, the fact remains that there have been a lot of Bills dealing with the issue over the past 10 years. It is not enough to legislate, however; we have to carry people with us. Every citizen is a stakeholder in ensuring a nation, a community and a street without crime. Opposition spokesmen in particular use the words "zero tolerance" about dealing with crime, but zero tolerance should not be a statement or philosophy imposed on individuals; it should be a personal commitment from each citizen that they will not tolerate crime locally.
	I support the Bill and with the caveats that I have just expressed I hope very much that it will receive a Second Reading.

David Heath: It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) in his first outing in the Chamber as Chairman of the Select Committee on Home Affairs. He made some sensible comments about the Bill, especially about special immigration status, which is a matter we shall want to look at carefully in Committee.
	The one point where I disagreed with the right hon. Gentleman was over the strange business of the counting of criminal justice Bills. I certainly heard the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) say that the number was 35 and I thought I heard the Lord Chancellor entering a plea of guilty and asking for another four to be taken into account. There is an almost annual procession of criminal justice and/or immigration Bills, so I suppose we must be grateful that in this instance we have a portmanteau Bill that covers both headings.
	I have to enter an objection to the process. It is extraordinary that a Bill of such complexity and importance is being introduced at this stage of the parliamentary timetable—a few weeks before the end of the Session—with the expectation of the Government that it will receive carry-over, which is not the purpose for which the carry-over procedure was introduced, and with a heavily truncated Committee stage. The programme motion on which we shall vote later requires us to complete our Committee proceedings by 30 October. For a Bill of 129 clauses and 235 pages, that is an extraordinary reduction in the amount of scrutiny the House will be afforded and I do not accept that it is an appropriate way of dealing with a Bill of such importance.
	As has been said, the Bill is one of those extraordinary measures that emanate so often from the Home Office—and now from the Ministry of Justice—that appear to be a convenient piece of legislation on which any and every item can be hung with no common threads between what is proposed. The significant problem I have with so much of what the Government propose in the sphere of home affairs and justice is that they mistake legislative action as a substitute for executive action in actually getting our systems to work properly.

David Hanson: I reassure the hon. Gentleman that the date of 30 October mentioned in the programme motion relates solely to the nature of the likely date of the forthcoming Gracious Speech. The carry-over motion will apply to the Committee, too.

David Heath: I am grateful to the Minister for that assurance but that is not actually what the motion says. If that is what is intended, it would have been helpful if it had been said. However, we must take the right hon. Gentleman at his word.

Edward Garnier: The hon. Gentleman is right to point out that oddity on the Order Paper. Paragraph 2 of the motion states:
	"Proceedings in the Public Bill Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Tuesday 30th October 2007."
	That is perfectly clear English. The carry-over motion, No. 3 on the Order Paper, deals with incomplete business that can be resumed in the next Session, but if the Committee stage has been completed all that is left in the House is Report and Third Reading, so the hon. Gentleman is perfectly right. Perhaps the drafters of Government motions need to apply their minds to what motions mean as opposed to what they think they mean.

David Heath: I think the hon. and learned Gentleman is absolutely right; that was my reading of the motions. I can assume only that the Government intend to propose a motion at the start of the next Session of Parliament for recommittal. If that is the case and they can give that assurance—

David Hanson: indicated assent.

David Heath: I think I heard the Minister give such an assurance, so I invite him not to press motions 2 and 3 tonight and to return to the House tomorrow with motions that are in order and make clear the Government's intention. However, that is enough about process. Let us deal with the substance of the Bill.
	Part 2 deals with sentencing. We heard an interesting exposition from the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs of what he understands by the term "honesty in sentencing". I agree that it is an essential missing ingredient of the Bill. The Liberal Democrats have argued for a long time that when a sentence is handed down in court it should say what is going to happen, for the benefit of victims, witnesses, the public and, indeed, defendants. That means that we need a change in the way that sentences are described in court so that there is a statement of the term that is to be served and the additional term that will be served if the prisoner does not accept the disciplines of the penal system. That seems an entirely appropriate way of dealing with matters.
	Our judicial and criminal justice systems are put constantly into disrepute by people realising that a sentence of a particular length of time means a much shorter time in practice. We argued against automatic release schemes, as did the Conservatives, and our suggestion would not require more or fewer people to be in prison, but simply clarity in the courts, which is in the interests of the criminal justice system. We certainly intend to table amendments in Committee to make that a reality and I hope that we shall have the support of the Committee in doing so.
	Secondly, I welcome the provision for judicial discretion in the discount procedure, if we have to accept the present system. The Lord Chancellor was careful in the words he used to support the judicial decision in the Sweeney case. I wish that the right hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (John Reid) had been equally discreet when the sentence was given. When Home Secretaries vilify the bench because of a system introduced by the Government, it does nothing to further the interests either of justice or judicial independence. I hope that future occupants of the position of Home Secretary will understand that point and perhaps be guided by the Lord Chancellor in so doing.
	Thirdly, we must recognise the crisis in our prisons—again, something that was alluded to by the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs. We have an ongoing disaster in our prisons, but I do not accept the simplistic thesis that we can deal with it simply by building more and more prisons and putting the same categories of prisoner into them. That does not work. We need to ensure that those who should not be in our prison system are taken out, to leave room for the proper rehabilitation of prisoners who must be in prison for the protection of the public, quite rightly. That involves moving those with mental illness into secure mental institutions, taking those with drug and alcohol problems into places where they will have treatment and taking out those who are serving very short custodial sentences, which do not work. Sentences of three months or less have an almost 100 per cent. recidivism rate. Therefore, what on earth is the point of using valuable prison space to impose a sentence that will have nil effect on the offender reoffending? There are better and tougher ways to deal with those offenders in the community.
	I should like to deal next with perhaps a rather crucial issue. Some right hon. and hon. Members may have read the story in  The Times of 28 September 2007, saying that the brand-new National Offender Management Service, in which the Government have invested so much money and attention, is to be scrapped. I have heard no official rebuttal of that most extraordinary story.

David Hanson: rose—

David Heath: We are going to hear it now, I hope.

David Hanson: I will give the hon. Gentleman an official rebuttal of that story. We are examining internal structures, but the principle of offender management and the National Offender Management Service remains intact.

David Heath: I am glad about that, and while the Minister is pondering these very difficult things, he can explain why £155 million has been spent on a computer system that still does not work and an extra £33 million is required—something that perhaps one of our very excellent Committees that examine departmental expenditure might like to consider, to discover why the new system, in which the Government have invested a large amount of money and attention, is not meeting any of its targets at the moment. That is a concern because, when we do not have a particularly effective probation service, we put members of the public at risk. We see that frequently in the limitations of early release that involves insufficient examination and assessment, and people therefore commit offences having been released from prison too early. We ought to avoid that.
	The Lord Chancellor—I keep wanting to say Home Secretary and I have to remind myself that he is the Lord Chancellor—is interesting in what he has to say on his "Have-a-go hero" strand. That is not to sneer at him for what he said about his own role or, indeed, at anyone who tries to prevent crime, but it is very hard for us to reconcile what he said at conference and in his press releases and public statements with what has been consistently said from the Treasury Bench in response to that question when it has been raised in private Members' Bills.
	I am not fully convinced by the argument that a change of law is necessary. Indeed, I accept many of the assurances that were previously given by Ministers that there is no defect in the current law. However, there is an enormous defect in the policies that are understood by the police and other investigating officers. Frankly, they occasionally pursue absurd investigations and arrests, and that occasionally gets through to the prosecution service as well. It is absolutely essential that we get a bit of common sense into the policing of the issue, so that people understand that reasonable force is perfectly acceptable and, indeed, commendable and that only where grossly disproportionate force is used should the investigating authorities look at the householder rather than their assailant, the burglar or whatever.
	The Bill has some useful parts. The Criminal Justice Act 2003 is revisited, as is the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. I largely welcome what has been suggested in that respect. I welcome clause 53, which will remove the automaticity of the reprimand and final warning legal proceedings. I welcome clause 10 on the abolition of suspended sentences for summary crimes. I understand that I differ from Conservative Front Benchers in that respect, but it seems quite wrong that suspended sentences are used in the magistrates courts as a substitute for immediate sentences of a different kind, which was certainly not the Government's intention. Although the Lord Chancellor went into one of his more Gilbert and Sullivan moments in referring to the punishment fitting the crime, I support condign punishment. It is absolutely right that we should seek to find appropriate remedies for breaches in the law.
	I worry that the Bill presents a wider range of disposals, without the resourcing that is necessary for the probation service and others to support those disposals in the community. I am concerned about clause 18, which deals with the change in the requirements for reference from the Parole Board for recall. Again, that is putting effectively a judicial decision in the hands of the Executive, and I wonder whether the lawfulness of that change, like others, will be challenged eventually.
	On compensation for miscarriages of justice, the Government have got things completely the wrong way around. They are trying to make the limit on compensation for miscarriages of justice the same as the limit on compensation for the victims of crime, but the problem is the limit of £500,000 that they introduced under the criminal injuries compensation scheme, not the fact that people who have had the worst thing inflicted on them that a state can inflict—imprisonment for a crime that they did not commit—should be compensated properly. Rather than limiting that liability, the Government should be extending the capacity for criminal compensation.
	The Lord Chancellor has been referred to as a grey beard on occasion over the past few days. I heard him suggest this morning that that was perhaps an inappropriate description, but he has shown a degree of wisdom befitting his rank and status in agreeing to look again at clause 26 and the rewrite of the Criminal Appeal Act 1968. My hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (David Howarth) questioned the application of what is proposed in the Bill to the Mullen case. If we in this country are to accept circumstances in which extraordinary rendition is whitewashed by legal procedure, we are on a very slippery slope indeed. I think that the Lord Chancellor now recognises that that is the purpose of the amended wording that will be introduced, and I welcome that and am grateful to him for it.
	On violent offender orders, we now have a huge panoply of civil remedies for the avoidance of criminal offences and, indeed, in substitution for criminal proceedings. Some of them work; some do not. We have always argued that ASBOs have a place, but only if they are accompanied by much closer supervision and support for the offender to prevent reoffending. It is very hard to understand exactly what category of offender is likely to be caught by violent offender orders. Why is there not a simple read-across from the sex offenders register, so that we are aware of the whereabouts of violent offenders and they have a reporting system, but with no further sanction? I will consider that very carefully in Committee with my hon. Friends, and we shall assess how effective violent offender orders are likely to be.
	In dealing with the clauses on nuisance or disturbance on hospital premises, I wish to say that nothing excuses violence or disorder in a hospital or GP premises—a point made by a Labour Member—that gets in the way of proper treatment. Indeed, I was a co-sponsor of the Bill, now an Act, introduced by the Father of the House to deal with difficulties in the emergency services. However, it is hard to understand the precise wording of the clauses. It is difficult to understand why it specifies hospitals and not other NHS premises and why it does not refer to patients, who are often the principal offenders. I am afraid that those involved are often not just people who walk in off the streets; if we go to any accident and emergency ward, we will often see people admitted as patients, seeking treatment, who nevertheless display violence against medical officers. Lastly, it is hard to see why the issue is not covered by existing law.
	I refer the Lord Chancellor in all seriousness to the 1999 case of Porter  v. Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis. It appears to deal with an exactly analogous position: a breach of the peace, civil trespass, a person refusing to leave premises after being asked to leave, the attendance of the police and an arrest for breach of the peace. The precise circumstances covered by the offence in the Bill are covered by that case.

Edward Garnier: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I apologise to the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) for interrupting him just as he comes to the end of his speech. However, at the beginning of his remarks, he introduced some concerns about the procedure. We need to get those sorted out now before we go too far. I want to raise this point of order before he has sat down, so that he has an opportunity to deal with it from his party's point of view.
	Madam Deputy Speaker, you will see in the Order Paper the Government's motion in relation to the Bill's Second Reading. It is clear from that that the programme motion, which is to be considered after the Second Reading debate, is to limit the extent of the Public Bill Committee, which must conclude by Tuesday 30 October 2007. Report and Third Reading consideration are not given a date; nor are other proceedings. However, if the House agrees to the motion, the carry-over permits the Bill to be dealt with again in the next Session. I think that the Queen's Speech is on 6 November—

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. and learned Gentleman has raised the kind of issue that will be best dealt with in the winding-up speeches, when there will be time for clarification. I am sure that he is aware of the time pressure in this debate. It would be appropriate for the Minister to deal with the issue in the wind-up.

Edward Garnier: I am most grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker.  [Interruption.] I understand from the Secretary of State that the Minister will deal with the issue—after the close of this debate, I assume, but before we start on the next business.

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I have just made a recommendation that the Minister should deal with the issue in his winding-up speech. I am sure that he will do just that.

David Heath: I am grateful for that response to the point of order raised by the hon. and learned Gentleman, who has confirmed that my immediate concerns were right. I look to the Minister in his winding-up speech either to accept that the motions should not be put this evening or to make a clear statement that a further procedural motion will be tabled to put right the obvious anomaly.
	I want to make two brief points in conclusion. The first is about the provisions on extreme pornography and prostitution. The abolition of the term "common prostitute" is certainly welcome. However, I wonder why we are revisiting the Sexual Offences Act 2003 so soon. The Lord Chancellor said that times have changed since 10 years ago; yes, they have, but they have not changed as much since four years ago. It seems odd that we are revisiting an issue that we thought had been dealt with by a definitive Act, following careful scrutiny. I shall carefully consider what the Lord Chancellor says on the subject, but it strikes me as odd that, having established a consolidating measure, which was carefully argued through the House, we are revisiting it so soon.
	We all want to stamp out homophobic hate crime. The degree to which we can support any amendment will depend on the terms in which it is put, but I hope that there will be no doubt that the Liberal Democrat Members will support a workable solution—one that does not compromise people who are simply professing faith or expressing themselves in ways that we may not agree with, but are nevertheless not intended to incite crime.
	In conclusion, we wish to support some measures in the Bill; there are some about which we will argue strongly in Committee and no doubt return to on Report. I welcome the attitude expressed by the Lord Chancellor in some respects; there are issues on which he is prepared to listen, and he has already made a concession on one important element of the Bill. We will seek to amend that which is wrong. We will apply reasoned arguments and try to restrain the authoritarian instincts of the Government in the interests of justice and the protection of the public. Those are the paramount considerations. We do not intend to vote against the Bill this evening, and we will listen carefully to what the Minister says about the programme and carry-over motions.

Several hon. Members: rose —

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I remind right hon. and hon. Members of Mr. Speaker's time limit of 10 minutes on Back-Bench speeches. In view of the time factor, Members may wish to restrict their contributions even further.

David Lepper: I shall be brief, Madam Deputy Speaker. I wish to confine my remarks to clauses 64 to 66 in part 6, which deal with extreme pornographic material.
	Jane Longhurst, my constituent, was a respected and dedicated teacher at a school for children with learning difficulties in my constituency. It happens to be the last school where I taught before I retired from teaching, but we did not work there at the same time. Obviously, Jane's murder caused concern throughout the whole community. During the trial of Graham Coutts, there was horror at the revelations about how she had died and the circumstances surrounding her death. Everyone was shocked.
	I believe that it is because of the determination of Jane's mother, Liz Longhurst, and other members of her family and the responsiveness of Ministers of this Government that those clauses are before us tonight. I welcome that. Liz Longhurst decided that her daughter's death should not go unmarked and that the extreme pornographic images that had fuelled the fantasies of the man who was twice tried for Jane Longhurst's murder—the family had to go through the horror of a trial twice—had to be dealt with. She launched a campaign, which, I am glad to say, received the backing of Amnesty International as part of its campaign against violence against women.
	The campaign, aspects of which I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, West (Martin Salter) will want to discuss if he has the opportunity, received the backing of local newspapers. I must pay tribute to  The Argus newspaper, published in my constituency, and particularly to Phil Mills, who was its chief crime reporter, although sadly no longer.
	The campaign led to a 50,000-signature petition calling for action being presented in the House. There has been determination on the part of Mrs. Longhurst—the fact that we are discussing the issue is a tribute to her—and on the part of many of the predecessors of those on the Government Front Bench. I pay particular tribute to the former Home Secretaries, my right hon. Friends the Members for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) and for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke) for the sympathetic way in which they listened to the case for legislation that we put to them. I also pay tribute to other Ministers who have dealt with the matter—in particular my hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale, East (Paul Goggins) and the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Mr. Coaker).
	We were determined that something should be done to tackle the pernicious trade in violent internet pornography. I welcome the way in which the Government have responded to the campaign. The provisions before us tonight do not go as far as many of us want, but they tackle an important aspect of the issue: the possession of those awful images. In doing so, they fulfil one of the requirements that the Lord Chancellor said in his opening remarks is an underlying principle of the Bill: to make sure that the law keeps pace not only with changing patterns of crime, but with technology and the way in which it affects patterns of crime. I wish we had proposals before us tonight to tackle at source the internet sites that purvey this material. However, that needs a degree of international co-operation which, sadly, despite the determination of Ministers, we have not yet been able to achieve—in the same way as we have achieved international co-operation to tackle child pornography. That is a further stage of the campaign.
	The provisions do tackle possession. I ask the House to consider the comments of Jim Gamble, the chief executive of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre and, at the time he made the comments, the lead for the Association of Chief Police Officers in this area of criminality. He said:
	"Legislation is only truly effective if it develops step by step with technological advances."
	The provisions start to address the issue of how the internet can be used to supplement this area of criminality and build on the fundamentals of obscene publications legislation.

Martin Salter: Will my hon. Friend also pay tribute to the Reading Evening Post for its support of the Longhurst campaign? More importantly, does he recognise that the campaign achieved the support of 180 MPs, who signed early-day motion 583 on the murder of Jane Longhurst and internet sites promoting necrophilia? We are talking about some of the most obscene and disturbing material, including internet sites such as Necrobabes, Death by Asphyxia, and Hanging Bitches. Does he agree that the provisions will not make a new offence of anything that is not already illegal? We are talking about material that is already illegal under obscene publications legislation. It is merely the possession of the images that will become a new criminal offence.

David Lepper: I welcome my hon. Friend's intervention and agree with the points that he makes. I also welcome the commitment of Members on the Opposition Front Bench to support at least this part of the Bill, if not other aspects of it. Building on what my hon. Friend said, the explanatory notes that are available to us all make it clear that the intention of these clauses is not to restrict makers of narrative films or documentaries, or artists. The provisions are quite specific about the need to prove in court—and, I believe, to have the permission of the Director of Public Prosecutions to take the matter to court—that the intention of those involved is very different from that of people producing works of fiction in a more mainstream way.
	I welcome the fact that the Government have responded to the strong demand from the family of Jane Longhurst and all the organisations that have supported Jane's family. None of us can really know the anguish that Mrs. Longhurst and other members of her family have been through over the four years since her daughter's death. However, we have before us tonight legislation that, in some small way, when eventually passed, will be a memorial to a dedicated teacher and a wonderful daughter.

Paul Beresford: At the conclusion of his remarks, the Secretary of State suggested that the Opposition should at least not resist the Second Reading of the Bill and indicated that there may be some co-operation, particularly in Committee. I have certainly heard that before and I ask the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr. Hanson) to think about that. In the past, I have put forward a considerable number of amendments and new clauses, and even a private Member's Bill—only to have them rejected out of hand and then see the provisions return months, or even years later, sometimes with almost identical wording, under the Government's banner. With that in mind, perhaps the Minister of State will consider a couple of suggestions this evening. I am bringing them forward now, so that they can be considered as the Committee stage moves forward.
	I am referring in particular to part 6 of the Bill. The thinking behind the provisions on extreme pornographic images is echoed in the legislation dealing with paedophiles, as the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (David Lepper) mentioned. There is clear evidence that paedophiles use literature, drawings, pseudo-photographs, photographs, films, videos, websites and digital material to stimulate their activities and generate interest among others.
	Clause 68 is an ideal platform to deal with a new problem that reflects the changes in thinking and movements in the digital world. Again, this follows on from what the hon. Gentleman said. Computer-generated imaging is a software system that is used by clothes manufacturers to produce a figure that they will clothe and use legitimately. Paedophiles use it to produce images of children having sex with children or adults having sex with children, and use that material for stimulation. That is well known by the Home Office. I have asked the present Home Secretary and the previous Home Secretary for action on the matter, and it has been promised. The internet taskforce is looking at the issue. It would be quite simple to make a small and subtle change to the clause to introduce a suitable provision. I ask the Secretary of State for Justice and his Ministers to look at the matter positively and to use this opportunity to deal with the issue, thus keeping ahead of the changes in digital imaging.
	The second issue that I want to raise—the encryption of images—is being looked at by the internet taskforce and has been looked at over a number of years by Home Office Ministers. The images used by paedophiles, and the individuals covered by the provisions that are being proposed, can be encrypted. Nowadays, if one has an operating system such as the new Vista professional, it is easy to ensure that images are encrypted when one turns one's computer off and it is impossible for law enforcement officers to access those images. There are a large number of reasons, which I will not rehearse—because I have mentioned them before—for getting access to the images. Quite apart from catching the criminals themselves, in the case of paedophiles it is important to find the children, because they need help.
	In addition, 128 bit and 256 bit encryption has been available for some time, free, on the internet. It is quite simple to use. Individuals with any intelligence can use it to prevent access to images. There are plenty of cases—the Home Office will know of them—in which things are well known by the police force. I am thinking in particular of an Australian individual who was deported by the police. As he headed into terminal 3 at Heathrow for his Qantas flight back to Australia, he had something in the region of 32,000 images—disgusting paedophile images—that the police could not get to because of encryption.
	In the past, the answer has been the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. Seven years after that Act was passed, provisions in part 3, which dealt with this aspect, came into force in secondary legislation. The difficulty is that the maximum sentence is two years. The sort of sentences that a paedophile hiding such material could expect if there was access to the material is anything up to 15 years, as well as being put on the sex offenders register. The paedophile is unlikely to produce the code, as required under part III of RIPA, because he will only get two years for not doing so—and as my Front-Bench colleagues might point out, he would actually serve only one—and will not go on the sex offenders list, so he will hold his hands up to that crime, but not to the other one.
	During the consultation on part III of RIPA, I was able to help some of the Ministers' officials in our discussions with the people concerned from the City on the implementation of part III. In that consultation, with my encouragement, the Government suggested that consideration be given to increasing that two years to a maximum of 10 years. That 10-year maximum related to legislative penalties for other paedophile activities. Nothing has happened. We have an opportunity to reflect on that, to consider the consultation, and to use the Bill to act on the issue and possibly increase the maximum sentence to 10 years, because there are related clauses in it. I ask the Government to use this opportunity, and to use the Committee stage to discuss the issue. I hope to put forward amendments and new clauses proposing that change. As the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion suggested, the Government could use this opportunity to get ahead of, or at least to keep up with, the way in which digital imaging has moved forward.

Alun Michael: I welcome this ambitious, wide-ranging Bill, which consolidates the progress that has been made in the past 10 years. It is a progressive piece of legislation. It is disappointing that the official Opposition did not engage with it more seriously, particularly as the Lord Chancellor has responded positively to some of the questions asked about the detail of the Bill.
	When it comes to implementing the Bill, the challenge for the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office is to give people working in all parts of the criminal justice system clarity about what is expected of them. In recent years, even when legislation has been clear, there have been far too many mixed messages. Guidance and the detailed implementation of specific measures have been less clear than Ministers intended. The courts sometimes seem confused about how it all fits together, and as the Bill is about clarity, consolidation and progress, this is an ideal opportunity to set matters right. I make that point because the criminal justice system is highly complex, and the devil is in the detail, as my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor has always been fond of pointing out.
	I want to refer to several specific provisions in my role as critical friend. First, I want to discuss the Bill's overall purpose. As the Library's excellent note on the Bill points out, the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 clearly set out the overall purpose of the youth justice system. The Act says:
	"1) It shall be the principal aim of the youth justice system to prevent offending by children and young persons.
	(2) In addition to any other duty to which they are subject, it shall be the duty of all persons and bodies carrying out functions in relation to the youth justice system to have regard to that aim."
	Clause 9 of the Bill clarifies the approach that the court should use in sentencing, and I welcome that, provided that the courts do not confuse the issue by separating their responsibilities in sentencing from the overarching statement of purpose set for the whole criminal justice system, of which they are a part. My point is that the courts seem well able to forget what they are for. That is an important point, because the more that young offenders offend, the more that they damage their victims, the community as a whole, themselves, their peer group and their family, so we must not lose that focus.
	Secondly, on the sentencing of young people, the proposal to combine 15 different requirements in a single youth rehabilitation order is welcome. Having so many different orders became confusing for young people, parents and the public. There are challenges: first, we need to know what is working and what is not, so each specific use of the 15 categories needs to be accurately recorded on each occasion. When an order is made, if it incorporates, say, three of the requirements, each should be recorded in the statistics, and the outcomes should be monitored. The Prison Reform Trust expressed concern that a generic community sentence could reduce the hierarchy of disposals available to the court. There are two ways of dealing with that genuine fear. The first is to make it clear that the order will be used on several occasions with a persistent offender, but with different choices being made from the menu on each occasion. The second is to get rid of the idea of a hierarchy of disposals altogether, because it is a lazy way of sentencing. It means that a court could fail to use the appropriate disposal, which might end a criminal career, because the offender is too high up the tariff, or not high enough on it. Either one is madness; what counts is getting it right in each case.
	As a magistrate and as a youth worker who worked with young offenders before entering the House, I particularly welcome the addition of the activity requirement. Engaging the young person's mind in new interests and challenges is frequently successful, especially when it is applied at the same time as interventions that address the offending behaviour and its causes, as the new style of order will do. It is not a soft option; it is an essential, tough element in ensuring a comprehensive approach to diverting young people from crime. I also welcome the introduction of youth conditional cautions and the Government's intention to do more to embed restorative approaches in the system.
	Thirdly, on antisocial behaviour orders, clause 108 creates a statutory requirement to review after one year an ASBO placed on a young person aged under 17. That is good, but I remind Ministers that when I introduced the ASBO in 1998 I assured the House that the Government intended it primarily as an order for adults, and that it would be used only exceptionally on young persons. The whole point of the ASBO is to prevent further offending. To take the message of the ASBO to heart, offenders have to appreciate what they have to lose, and teenagers often have no sense of risk. It has worked well and has been successful when properly used, but it is less successful with the younger age group, so I urge Ministers to implement the clause, but to change the guidance so that the ASBO is used as designed and intended.
	The ASBO is an effective measure of deterrence and prevention. It deals with the reality. It is a movie film, rather than the snapshot that the courts normally deal with. It prevents what it forbids—a test that most laws fail, as Gibbon pointed out in "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire". Someone who obeys its requirements has no criminal record and no punishment, and is deterred from a life of crime, but it comes into disrepute when used in inappropriate circumstances with those who are too young to understand what it means, or the risk that they run if they breach it.
	My fourth point is on the protection of NHS staff. I welcome the clause on that subject. Our front-line staff in the NHS deserve protection. However, looking outside the legislation, I ask my right hon. Friend the Minister of State to consider the success of the approach to violence reduction adopted in Cardiff. It is 10 years since my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor came with me to meet Professor Jonathan Shepherd in the accident and emergency unit in Cardiff, and saw what was being done to identify the cases of violence that were draining NHS resources. It was discovered that many incidents were unreported. A clinical analysis of the experience in the NHS showed that targeted action could reduce both alcohol-related violence and domestic violence. The result is that Cardiff is now the safest city in its cohort of cities. The public is safer and the waste of NHS resources on avoidable, expensive treatment has been reduced. That lesson should be applied elsewhere.
	Fifthly, I want to deal with clause 12 on indeterminate sentences. The Bill will result in a different sentence for the offender who is given an indeterminate sentence. The Prison Reform Trust comments that in an increasingly risk-averse culture, that could become the default setting. It has a point, especially as the courts, rather than having a clear focus on getting it right, often appear more at ease following a pattern of sentencing. There is no quick fix on that issue. The point of an indeterminate sentence is to manage risk and prevent danger, so one cannot determine matters entirely at the point of sentence. We need to look at the clause with care. We do not need tougher or softer sentencing; we need better targeted sentencing, combined with an effective system of managing the risks, and we need to give those in the system the confidence to address the risks effectively.
	Sixthly, on sharing data, I am pleased that clause 75 provides custodial penalties for those who knowingly and recklessly disclose personal data, but will the Minister stress clearly that this must not be used as an excuse for failing to disclose information when it is appropriate—for example, in order to prevent and reduce crime, as set out in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998? "If in doubt, don't disclose" is still the default setting for too many data controllers and lawyers, whereas the right response is always to balance the requirement of data protection against the public interest in disclosure and to make a responsible judgment.
	There are many other points in the Bill on which I would love to comment, but I am conscious that many of my hon. Friends wish to speak. I will therefore simply say that this is a good piece of legislation that has my support, and I am delighted that the Government have sought to cover so many important issues within the context of the Bill.

Alan Beith: I should like to record my congratulations to the new Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz). He served with me from the beginning on the Constitutional Affairs Committee, which is shortly to become the Justice Committee. He was acerbic in his questioning of Ministers, and showed neither fear nor favour to Ministers of the Government whom he supports. I hope that he will apply that rigour to his new work; I am sure that he will.
	May I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) on teasing out the issue of the programme motion? I am glad that there have been discussions on that, and that it looks as though the issue will be resolved satisfactorily. I would expect no less from the Lord Chancellor. He always shows an exemplary degree of recognition of the importance of procedures of the House—by the admittedly not always demanding standards of the present Administration—and that is something that I have come to expect from him.
	It is necessary to look at the background to the Bill, because in some respects it has been built on rather shaky foundations, given some of the problems that we face in the criminal justice system. Prison numbers have been cited several times, with 81,000 and rising, and hundreds in police cells. The early releases under the end-of-custody licensing scheme have also caused concern, and the prison officers' dispute is a matter of serious concern to the Minister of State. Whatever view we take of the tactics used by the Prison Officers Association, we need to bear in mind the prison officers' deep sense of being undervalued.
	The Minister came to my constituency and together we visited Acklington and Castington—a prison and a young offenders institution. I will give the House an example that the right hon. Gentleman will remember. The prison officers asked how it was that they, who were carrying out their jobs on behalf of our society, were almost the only public servants who were not protected from the effects of smoke inhalation when going about their work. Prisoners are allowed to smoke in their cells and, as the Minister observed, in some cases that involves groups of cells and other areas in which they can move about, and into which the prison officers must go. "Yet again," said the prison officers, "nobody thinks about us when laws are drafted or policies devised." The Minister must be aware from some of the meetings that he has had that many prison officers feel seriously undervalued, not just financially but more widely as well.
	The Carter review into the custodial estate and sentencing represents another element of uncertainty in regard to the foundations on which this legislation rests. I also referred in an earlier intervention to the chaos over indeterminate sentences for public protection. They are being used far more widely because of the lack of judicial discretion available. They are applied to summary offences, and now cover 153 offences, some of which would normally attract a very short sentence. The result is that the Parole Board cannot deliver reports in time, and people are therefore being detained when there is no proper basis for doing so. The whole system collapsed in Wells and Walker  v. the Parole Board. In the meantime, the president of the Queen's Bench Division said that the Parole Board needed 100 extra judges to manage a system operating on this scale. The chief executive of the Parole Board has said that £3 million has been allocated to the National Offender Management Service to address the problem, but
	"where the infrastructure will be found to spend that money properly, I do not know".
	That system is going very seriously wrong indeed.
	Meanwhile, NOMS itself is proving as wasteful and useless a superstructure as we all warned it would be. It was bolted on top of a system that was already under strain, and we could have used the money required for the creation of NOMS in much more constructive ways. Mrs. Brennan of the Ministry of Justice is reported to be carrying out a fundamental review—to which the Minister referred earlier—which might even recommend the break-up of NOMS, even though it could retain some nominal overall structure. On top of that, the NOMS information technology system is in chaos.
	As if all that were not enough, there is an unresolved dispute between Ministers and the senior judiciary over the safeguarding of judicial independence. That has particular relevance to sentencing. We still have not had any kind of statement from the Lord Chancellor on whether further discussions on that matter are taking place, and I hope that we shall have the opportunity to press him further on that this week.
	None of those problems will be solved by the Bill. Even where it addresses some of them, it does not seem to tackle them effectively. I have read and re-read clause 12, on indeterminate sentences, and it might be a mark of my inadequacy, but I still cannot understand what its effect will be. It certainly will not be to remove the problems relating to indeterminate sentences that I have just identified.
	Of course, there are good things in the Bill, most obviously perhaps the fact that it will give a statutory basis to the prisons ombudsman. That is overdue, necessary and very welcome. However, some of the Bill's provisions could actually add to the number of people in custody. For example, some of the provisions in clause 2 on youth offender orders, and even those in clause 72 on street offences, could have that effect.
	The Bill raises some important wider issues that have not been considered by the Constitutional Affairs Committee, and any view that I express on those will be a personal one. I shall confine myself to just one of them. Clause 26 will allow the Court of Appeal to form a view when considering whether a conviction is unsafe on the basis of abuse of process, and to form its own view as to guilt on the basis of the evidence available to it. I am glad to hear from today's discussions that that clause is to be reviewed. It would give the Court of Appeal a fact-finding role—not its normal role—and has the potential to undermine the integrity of the judicial process by allowing bad process to obtain a conviction. This could encourage what has misleadingly, or perhaps euphemistically, been called "noble cause corruption"—that is, the fabrication of evidence in order to obtain convictions when satisfactory evidence does not exist.
	Having made my criticism of the clause, however, I believe that we must also consider this question. If there is sufficient evidence of guilt but there has been some abuse of process, who should be punished? The danger is that if the method of dealing with abuse of process is to allow the appeal and free the offender, it will not be the person who has carried out the abuse of process who will be punished. It will not be the police officer who has fabricated evidence, or the prosecutor who has admitted into the prosecution case material that should not have been so admitted who will be punished. It will be the public, the community, who will have a dangerous criminal against whom there is clear evidence of guilt released on to their streets. So it will be the public who are being punished, not the person who perpetrated the offence.
	While it must be wrong to found conviction on unsafe processes, it is also wrong that the punishment for an abuse of process should be visited on the public, who are seeking the defence of the criminal justice system, rather than on those who have carried out the abuse. Wherever possible, the system ought to be punishing the abuse rather than stepping back from the determination of guilt. I am not convinced that the clause has got this right, although it does address a genuine—if quite rare—problem. The Government are right to try to address it in the Bill, and I hope that we can arrive at a satisfactory solution through further discussion. I hope also that, in response to the consideration that has taken place today, those discussions will be suitably measured, not only on that clause but on the many other features of this complex Bill.

Phil Wilson: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for allowing me this opportunity to make my maiden speech during the Second Reading of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill, which I believe will help to make our communities safer when it is implemented.
	During the Sedgefield by-election, I became aware that antisocial behaviour continues to be a constant worry for local people, even in an area such as Sedgefield where, because of this Government's policies, crime is well below the national average. Sedgefield constituency has been in existence since 1918, except for a short period between 1974 and 1983 when it was absorbed by other constituencies in County Durham. I pay tribute to those MPs who represented Sedgefield prior to 1974.
	If anyone had said to me, when Sedgefield re-emerged in 1983, that our Labour candidate would become leader of the Labour party and then the first Labour Prime Minister since 1979, that after 10 years he would resign his position and leave Parliament to become a middle east envoy, and that I would become his successor after fighting a by-election, I would have asked that person whether they had ever thought about taking up writing fiction. Fact, it would seem, is much more original than fiction.
	I would like to take this opportunity to wish Tony Blair, my predecessor, all the best for the future and put on record that I believe that this side of the House owes him a great debt of gratitude for the 13 years of leadership that he provided to the Labour party. The country owes him the same for the 10 years of leadership that he gave this nation. I know from speaking to him about it that he will always hold a special place in his heart for the people and communities of Sedgefield. I would also like to give Tony Blair's successor as Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr. Brown), my best wishes. I look forward to many more years of his premiership.
	I have always lived in Sedgefield and it is an honour and a privilege to represent the area where I grew up. For the people of Sedgefield, politics is not a game. For them, politics must do what it says on the tin. I hope that I can live up to that simple but honest request. I am the son of a coal miner. My Dad worked down the pit for almost 40 years and when I left school, he encouraged me to go on to do whatever I wanted, but he did not want me to follow him down the mines. He wanted better for me and, likewise, I want my family to go on to aspire. Aspiration should not be the preserve of the privileged few. It is something that we should all be allowed to reach for. That is one of the reasons why I joined the Labour party and it helps to form the basis of my creed.
	I grew up in the Trimdons—a cluster of former mining communities in the north of my constituency, which share the same heritage as many other villages in Sedgefield such as Wingate, Wheatley Hill, Thornley, Deaf Hill and Station Town to the east and Fishburn, Bishop Middleham, West Cornforth, Ferryhill and Chilton to the west. It is those communities that are remembered when Sedgefield is referred to as a former coal mining area. When Tony Blair became MP in 1983, the coal mining area of County Durham had been ravaged by the then Conservative Government—and those memories run deep. In those days, hope and aspiration were neglected and thrown on the spoil heap of unemployment and deprivation.
	When my predecessor made his maiden speech on 6 July 1983, he drew attention to the plight of the unemployed in Wingate. He said:
	"In the area of the Wingate employment exchange, which covers a very large part of the constituency, unemployment now stands at over 40 per cent. A large proportion of the unemployed are under 25 years of age... Those young people are not merely faced with a temporary inability to find work. For many, the dole queue is their first experience of adult life. For some, it will be their most significant experience."—[ Official Report, 6 July 1983; Vol. 45, c. 314.]
	Today—24 years later and 10 years into a Labour Government after my predecessor led us into victory in 1997—I am proud to say that the unemployment rate in my constituency is at or below the national average. Where there were 5,500 people in Sedgefield out of work in the mid-1980s, there are now just over 1,000 today. Today my constituency is ringed by new or refurbished hospitals, with a new hospital built on the outskirts of Sedgefield village itself. Education results are massively improving and there are now more than 1,000 new businesses in County Durham. Between Fishburn and Sedgefield, there is a new science park, NetPark, which is nurturing new cutting-edge technologies, which will attract highly valued jobs to the area so that we can face up to the challenges of globalisation. For those among us who care to compare Sedgefield today with the Sedgefield of the 1980s, they will see that it is a better place, in no small measure because of the resilience of my constituents and the policies of this Labour Government.
	In the west of the constituency lies Newton Aycliffe, a new town and the largest conurbation. It is a thriving community, with a population of 25,500 and to its credit one of the largest industrial estates in the region. Newton Aycliffe is a town with a bright future. The town has its issues, such as the regeneration of the privately owned town centre, but it was William Beveridge himself, the father of the welfare state and founder of the new town movement, who became chair of the Newton Aycliffe development corporation in 1947.
	To the east of Newton Aycliffe is the town of Sedgefield, after which the constituency is named—an ancient town, but with modern aspirations. Like other communities in the constituency, it keeps an eye in a forward direction. Further to the south, the constituency is more rural and includes the communities of Hurworth, Heighington, Middleton St. George and Piercebridge. It is an area of the constituency that is different from the rest, because in the by-election it was there that the Liberal Democrats stopped saying that they were the alternative to the Labour party and started saying that they were the alternative to the Conservative party.
	The identity of Sedgefield has been transformed since 1983. It is now confident, aspirational, proud of its coal mining heritage and I will continue to march with the miners' banners through the streets of Durham on gala day. However, the future lies in technology—once the preserve of science fiction—with strong communities, outward looking and ready to face the challenges of the 21st century.
	We live in a world where change can be fast and can seem threatening to an already existing way of life. Others more cynical may want to exploit that for their own ends. I am talking about the presence of the British National party. I raise that concern not for my own sake, but for the sake of the communities I represent. The BNP had not been present in Sedgefield until the local elections, but then their leaflets arrived on our doorsteps. They spread discontent, where discontent did not exist. They talked about a rising tide of crime, when crime in Sedgefield is below the national average. They talked of Sedgefield being "swamped by immigrants", to use their language, where in fact 99 per cent. of the population saw themselves as white British in the census of 2001. That kind of cynical politics has no place in the communities where I grew up, where the watchwords are compassion and solidarity.
	The people of Sedgefield are at their best when challenged. They do not turn to cynicism or prejudice. They draw from the deep well of community and solidarity, which has nourished the area for so long. The words,
	"by the strength of our common endeavour, we achieve more than we achieve alone"
	are not written down, or even spoken, but they are acted upon. For example, estates that have been pestered by antisocial behaviour have pulled together to root out the problem. In West Cornforth, the Cornforth partnership runs a successful youth project, which has seen the reduction in the amount of antisocial behaviour in the village. Local people and agencies have pulled together and united around progressing the well-being of their village. Likewise, in Ferryhill, the Ladder project is doing similar work and is a tribute to the local community.
	Those are examples of hope—and where there is hope, aspiration follows. What gives aspiration structure is education. We need to give our young people the wherewithal to fulfil their potential and equip them for the challenges of the future, which is why I endorse this Government's approach to education.
	Sedgefield has changed beyond recognition in my lifetime, but it is only in the past 10 years that the heartbeat of optimism has found its rhythm. I can assure my constituents that I will fight to protect their communities, promote their interests, serve them with diligence and build on the success of this Labour Government. With that, I have a lot to do, and I am grateful for the opportunity to make this, my first speech, to the House.

David Davies: It is a great pleasure to follow that maiden speech, which had all the elements of a good one. It was well delivered, if I may say so, and it was delivered to time. It was an excellent walk through the hon. Gentleman's new constituency. Indeed, as he talked about those new industrial estates, the new town centre and the place ringed with hospitals, I am sure we all wished that we, too, could have had a Prime Minister who served our constituencies and delivered that level of investment. Unfortunately, not all of us have been quite so lucky. In all seriousness, it must be very difficult to follow the previous Member who represented Sedgefield. Whatever one thinks of his politics, by virtue of his high position he will be a difficult act to follow, but I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will do so with aplomb.
	Now, to turn to this evening's debate, we heard a lot of tough rhetoric from Ministers earlier, but is the reality going to match that rhetoric? On the basis of previous performance, I find that somewhat hard to believe. We have heard more about tough sentences and increased numbers of prisoners, but the reality is that what is important is never the maximum sentence but the sentencing guidelines given to magistrates and judges.
	In 2005, for example, 5,957 people were convicted of having a knife in a public place, but only one of them was given the maximum sentence possible. In that same year, 5,689 were convicted of possessing a knife or sharp, bladed instrument unlawfully, but only two were given the maximum sentence. When it comes to drugs, about 7,000 people were convicted of possession with intent to supply cocaine, crack, heroin, ecstasy, LSD, methadone and other class A drugs. Of those 7,000 people convicted of intent to supply, only one—just one—received the maximum sentence. Many of them did not even receive custodial sentences. I recently attended a police raid on a known heroin dealer. A quantity of heroin was found, but the dealer was let off with a caution. For all the Government's rhetoric, the reality has not been tough on crime or tough on the causes of crime.
	There are other serious examples. Just a couple of years ago, a Bill was passed against the disgusting act of female genital mutilation, but, as far as I am aware, not one single person has been convicted. From all the information that I have received, it seems that only one person has been investigated for that horrendous crime. At the same time, the Government have been happily handing out bucketsful of taxpayers' money in compensation to prisoners and asylum seekers who have been encouraged to stick in bogus claims by money-grabbing lawyers working on a no win, no fee basis.
	To get to the gist of the Bill, all one has to do is turn to page 109 of the explanatory notes, which explains things very well. The Bill is not about getting tough on criminals; it is about letting more people out of jail. The financial effects are clear: it will free up 1,383 prison places. As a result of the Bill, nearly 1,500 fewer people will go to prison.
	The Government will say that those people are non-dangerous offenders and that a smaller number of non-dangerous people will go to prison. I do not like the terms "non-dangerous" and "non-serious". We hear them a lot. They apply to house burglars, car thieves, vandals and, of course, drug dealers. To my mind, such people should not be classified as "non-dangerous" or "non-serious". They are a serious problem for all law-abiding citizens and they deserve the sentences they get. In fact, they deserve much longer ones.
	As a result of the Bill, such people will be walking the streets or be given so-called community sentence orders, but those do not work either. I have here a document that relates the experiences of a prison doctor. I shall not quote from it at length, but he says that one of his jobs is to give out private sickness certificates to people who have been given community punishment or community rehabilitation so that they can avoid it.
	Those who receive such sentences quite often find that they are reduced afterwards, because it is not only prisoners who are let out early; it now happens to people on community sentences as well. They are given a community sentence, but a few weeks later the probation service will quietly scurry off to the courts to ask for a reduction. People do not realise that that happens. Such sentences are thoroughly ineffectual, because they are not properly policed by people who know what they are doing.
	I went to see such sentences being carried out in south Wales. A load of car thieves were being taken bike scrambling and shown videos for the day. I arrived at lunchtime and was told to go and talk to the clients, as I think they were called. I went up to one of them who turned round to his social worker and ordered her to go and get him his chips, which she duly did. She queued up and brought him his fish and chips back, because he could not be bothered to get in the queue himself. Yet she was the person who was supposed to be policing these people and trying to keep them in check. It is absolutely hopeless. The reality is that prison works, and it is high time that we all recognised that.

Martin Salter: I feel that the hon. Gentleman and the House need a breather. He contends that prison works. If that is the case, will he explain why 70 per cent. of young men leaving prison reoffend within two years?

David Davies: I am delighted to do so: it is because they are not put in prison for long enough.  [Laughter.] If the hon. Gentleman looks at the statistics, he will find that, yes, the figure is about 70 per cent. for people who receive a sentence of 12 months or less, but the longer the sentence, the lower the reoffending rate.

Martin Salter: rose—

David Davies: I will give way in a moment; let me finish. People sentenced to 10 years or more have a much lower reoffending rate of about 30 per cent. The reason is that someone who receives a 12-month sentence will serve not six months, because they are usually let out on a tag before they even reach the halfway point, but often only three or four months. Before anything else can happen, they have to go to a prison where they can be assessed. Once they have been assessed, they might get moved to a training wing. By the time that happens, they have only a few months left on their sentence, which is nowhere near long enough to deal with the problems they have.
	Most of those people have drug or alcohol problems and are very poorly educated. The first thing to do is clean them up and get them off drugs. Then they have to be given basic, rudimentary reading and writing skills. Finally, they need vocational qualifications. Yes, some of them might be a bit more intelligent, but by and large we are dealing with people who need basic vocational qualifications that will allow them to get a job when they come out of prison. Some prisons do that quite well, but most do not.

David Hanson: rose—

David Davies: I will give way again in a moment.
	The reality is that most prison officers say that, to keep prisoners quiet, there is a sort of Faustian pact: if someone has only a few months left on their sentence, they are put in a cell and have their life made as comfortable as possible, but very little work is done with them. That is why such people come out and reoffend.

David Hanson: Can the hon. Gentleman tell me how many prison places I, as a Minister, should plan for to implement his regime?

David Davies: I am afraid to say that I am unlikely to be a Minister under any Government, Conservative or Labour. That is the reality of the situation. I will tell the Minister what I think should happen, although this is purely my opinion.
	About 100,000 people commit half the crime in this country, according to the Carter report, and only 15,000 of them are in prison at any one time. If we could put the other 85,000 in prison—not throw them into a hole, which is more or less what happens at the moment—we could train them properly, get them off drink and drugs, deal with their anger management problems, and give them vocational qualifications and skills. That might take time and it would cost money, but we spend £2 billion dealing with 80,000 prisoners. We could spend another £2 billion, or even another £4 billion, dealing with another 80,000, which would involve up to £6 billion. However, those prisoners cost £60 billion every year, according to the Home Office in 2000, so by removing from the streets the people who are responsible for half of all crime we could save £30 billion. That means that prison could pay for itself, quite apart from the fact that it takes off the streets those who make the lives of law-abiding people a misery. It would give those people an opportunity, because at the moment they have no opportunity at all.
	One of the most shocking statistics, incidentally, is not the number of people who commit suicide, but the number of prisoners who die after they come out of prison, quite often because they take heroin and do not realise how strong it is. There are people dying all the time because they come out of prison. Prison is a safe environment for many of the people who are inside. I do not believe in throwing people into a hole. I do believe in a good Prison Service that looks after people properly.
	I am also interested in the parts of the Bill that deal with the NHS. I ask the Minister to consider something with an open mind. As he might know, I serve as a special constable with British Transport police, which is funded by the rail operators and has made most train stations, particularly in London, much safer. I will not bore him with the anecdote, but I once had to deal with a situation in a hospital.  [Interruption.] I have only two and a half minutes left, but it is a good anecdote.
	The security guards in the hospital were unwilling to deal with a violent patient. The nurse told us that they were sitting down having their cup of tea and were not willing to get involved. They were getting very low pay—minimum wage, I would guess, or slightly more—and simply were not interested. If NHS hospitals, particularly those in inner cities, had dedicated police officers who dealt only with those hospitals, they would have a body of people trained in the law and, more importantly, the equipment to deal with violent offenders, which, unfortunately, security guards do not have. That idea has worked well with train stations, and is basically what the Ministry of Defence police do on MOD sites and the Civil Nuclear Constabulary at nuclear establishments. I see no reason why we cannot do something similar with hospitals, particularly in built-up areas, where it is easy to get from one to the other.
	When the Minister looks again at the legislation that allows homeowners to defend themselves, will he bear it in mind that, according to a survey released recently, one in four people keep a baseball bat or blunt instrument under their beds to deal with criminals? That creates a great deal of danger to both them and—although I must admit that I do not lose too much sleep over it—the criminal. There must be a better way, and a way of enabling people to undergo training and have access to proper equipment that would enable them to defend their families, rather than relying on a baseball bat, which may harm them or someone entering their home.
	Parts of the Bill are to be commended, but the Minister cannot disguise the fact that, as a result of it, 1,300 extra people every year will walk the streets, most of whom will reoffend.

Virendra Sharma: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for allowing me the opportunity to make my maiden speech. First, I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) on his maiden speech. I know that there are many more excellent contributions to come from him in the future.
	It is a great honour and privilege to be elected to the House, to represent the people of Ealing, Southall and to speak in this historic Chamber. Almost 115 years ago, Dadabhai Naoroji, Member of the House for Finsbury Central, delivered his maiden speech. Today, as one of his ardent admirers, I have the privilege of making my own. Times in the last decade of the 19th century and the first decade of the 21st century are very dissimilar, but it is nevertheless a great tribute to the great democratic tradition of this great country that both of us, having been born in India under totally different circumstances, were sent by all the electors of our respective constituencies to this House. He delivered a message of hope, justice and fair play for all, irrespective of colour, creed or station in life. In my own humble way, I intend to do the same on behalf of all my constituents.
	Thirty-nine years ago, when I came to this country, I brought with me the secular and non-violent tradition acquired from my father's involvement in the Indian freedom struggle led by Mahatma Gandhi. In this great country, my reception was mixed, and my aspirations marked by the limitations that I felt around in those yesteryears. Ealing, Southall is a constituency with a lot of people from the Indian subcontinent who had great ambition and drive to drop anchor here and contribute to the economic and social life of this great metropolis of ours.
	Following the traditions of the House, I would also like to pay tribute to my immediate predecessor, the late Mr. Piara Singh Khabra, whose sad death in June of this year caused the by-election that resulted in my being elected to this House. In 1992, I was pleased to see him elected as the first Asian MP for Ealing, Southall. I stand in his place, though not, out of humility, in his shoes, given his great service to my constituents. He was a tireless campaigner on behalf of his constituents, and he and his wife Beulah gave 15 years dedicated service to the people of Ealing, Southall. His was a lifetime of service to the community, fighting injustice and intolerance. He will be long remembered for his hard work in the constituency that helped many individuals and also unified the many different communities in harmonious and peaceful co-existence. He will be a hard act to follow.
	My election in July was the first message that the British people gave to the Prime Minister of their resounding confidence in his ability and the courage of his convictions to lead our country in these difficult times to greater heights and to implement his vision for change. I identify fully with his efforts to connect to people's aspirations, problems and concerns directly and raise once again the profile of Britain as a moral leader in a peaceful world.
	In introducing my constituency to hon. Members, I am aware that many of them visited Ealing, Southall during the recent by-election campaign, so I recognise that some are already well acquainted with the unique place that is Ealing, Southall—the Leader of the Opposition seemed to like my constituency so much that he visited it no fewer than five times during the campaign. To all who visited Ealing, Southall, I say thank you, and to all those hon. Members who helped in my campaign I say a personal and special thank you.
	For those who did not have the pleasure of visiting Ealing, Southall during the by-election, we are in west London, bounded in the east by Ealing common, the north circular road and the District and Piccadilly tube lines, and in the west by the Grand Union canal, almost reaching the Hayes bypass and close to the Heathrow airport. The southern part of the constituency, just north of the A4 and M4, includes south Ealing, Northfield and Norwood Green, where I have had the privilege of representing local people as a councillor for more than 25 years. To the north we are bounded by the Ruislip road and the pleasant environs of Greenford. Bisecting the constituency and linking Ealing, West Ealing, Hanwell and Southall from east to west is the Uxbridge road, the route of the 207 bus, on which I once plied my trade as a bus conductor.
	The constituency has a proud history, with many historic buildings and institutions. They include Ealing and Southall town halls; Ealing studios, home to the Ealing comedies and today providing a state-of-the-art facility for film and media companies; Pitzhanger manor, home to the famous architect Sir John Soane and next to Walpole park, where the excellent Ealing jazz festival takes place each summer; and the Wharncliffe viaduct in Hanwell, built in 1844 by Sir Isambard Kingdom Brunel and jealously referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Stephen Pound) in his glorious maiden speech; as well as the three bridges and numerous magnificent churches, mosques, Sikh and Hindu temples, including the largest Sikh gurdwara in Europe, in Havelock road, Southall.
	The constituency is also rich in culture, with Questors theatre providing west end-quality performances in the queen of the suburbs and the Dominion centre in Southall showcasing so many diverse cultural performances and exhibitions. Ealing, Southall is also a tourist destination, with film buffs visiting locations used for many classic films, and, as many hon. Members discovered in the by-election, culinary experts visiting Southall for its wonderful food, especially its world-famous curries.
	What I am most proud of, however, is my constituency's great tradition and history of welcoming new arrivals, as well as the community cohesion that exists, as numerous communities from all over the world live together in harmony and peace. The Government's recent report on community cohesion, led by Darra Singh, the chief executive of Ealing council, was able to draw on many valuable lessons learned in my constituency. More than half the population is from an ethnic minority, the overwhelming majority coming from an Asian background, mostly Punjabi. There are significant Hindu and Muslim populations, but the Sikh community is the largest in the area, and in 2008 the third Sikh faith school in the UK will open in the constituency.
	Being a Member of this House who was born in India and who represents a constituency with large numbers of constituents either of Indian birth or descent, I would like to conclude with my reflections on the positive partnership between Britain and India and on how it will benefit all my constituents, regardless of where they come from, and indeed all peoples of both countries. As in Ealing, Southall, the two countries are at ease with each other. For Britain, India is a natural partner for business and culture. Ealing, Southall is a gateway for much of that trade and culture to pass through, in either direction. Our countries also share the belief that education, especially higher education, is the most important factor in a successful life. Harnessing those forces and common beliefs will lead to prosperity for all.
	Once again, I thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to give my maiden speech and I thank the House for listening to me.

Philip Dunne: I am delighted to be the first Conservative Member to welcome the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr. Sharma) to the House, and to congratulate him on a very thoughtful maiden speech. As he rightly anticipated, many Members who are in the Chamber this evening and many more outside had an opportunity to visit his constituency not long ago. I was one of them, and I must admit that—not being as familiar with it, and as used to driving around it, as he was as a result of his previous career—I did not always find it quite as easy to make my way around it as he no doubt did during his campaign.
	The hon. Gentleman's thoughtful comments about the relationship between this country and the Indian sub-continent were very welcome. I am sure that he will be able to bring that experience to bear in the House in the months, if not years, to come.
	I approach this debate having had the privilege of serving on the police service parliamentary scheme, from which I graduated earlier this year. I served with the West Mercia police, which gave me an excellent opportunity to understand the challenges that face our police daily in the area served by the force that covers my constituency. A month after my graduation dinner, they were brought home vividly to me by the tragic, and ultimately fatal, shooting of a West Mercia police constable, Richard Gray. He was shot in the head with a rifle, and fatally wounded, in Shrewsbury. One would not have thought that Shrewsbury was a hotspot for violent gun crime, but I am afraid that that is symptomatic of the problems that have been developing in our society, with gun and knife crime doubling over the last 10 years. I want to put on record my condolences to Mr. Gray's wife and two sons. He was a very brave officer who served with the armed response unit in Shrewsbury, in the Shropshire division.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) put the Bill in context. Given the plethora of criminal justice Bills that we have seen over the last 10 years, I regret that yet again we have missed an opportunity in failing to deal with some of the worst aspects of the growing violent crime in our society. The carrying of a gun or a knife should, in my view, be subject to more stringent sentencing. Where other countries have introduced stringent sentencing for the carrying of violent weapons, it has had a significant impact in acting as a deterrent to reduce the badge of honour for carrying guns or knives which is now so prevalent, particularly among the drug gangs that inhabit some of our inner-city areas.
	The Boston experience is often mentioned here, but I do not think it has been mentioned yet this evening. It is worth reminding the House that there was a significant increase in the number of young homicides in Boston, on the east coast of the United States, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The community united under the leadership of the local governor and mayor and put together the Boston gun project, which had a remarkable impact in reducing the number of young homicides. I believe that the number of such violent deaths fell by more than 60 per cent. as a result of that operation and the sentencing changes that were introduced, and that the reduction was sustained for several years. It is a great shame that part 8 of the Bill, which deals with the introduction of violent offender orders, does so little to seek to get to grips with the problem.
	I want to touch on two other parts of the Bill. Part 4, which covers young offenders and prisons, is, I fear, another missed opportunity. Last month, Stoke Heath young offenders institution near Market Drayton—in the constituency north of mine—erupted into the second major disturbance in 12 months. I visited it in the summer and saw for myself the overcrowding, which has led directly, in my view, to that problem. Over 30 per cent. more young people are incarcerated in Stoke Heath than it was built for. A building programme is under way to provide more places, but that is woefully late. The problem that that causes for the inmates there is that they are unable to spend the amount of time that they are expected to spend, which should be provided, going through the basic education and basic rehabilitation that will make them better equipped when they are released to fit into society and to minimise their prospects of reoffending.
	There is a major challenge for all those involved in seeking to rehabilitate our young offenders and, again, that is not addressed in the Bill. The youth community sentencing that is set out in part 1 does not go anywhere near addressing the major challenges. It is a sticking-plaster to try to assist with soft, low-level crime. It does not deal with the harder issues that are caused by increasing drug-related crime.
	Drug offences have risen 43 per cent. to almost 195,000 in 2006-07. Of those who enter into custody, some 55 per cent. are established problem drug users. In some prisons, that is up to 80 per cent., but the drug treatment and testing orders have failed to help those individuals to get off drugs and to kick their habit. Eighty per cent. of those who are issued with DTTOs reoffend within two years. What is needed, and what is missing from the Bill, is a serious proposition for this country to provide facilities to rehabilitate drug offenders. That would have far more impact on reducing crime and reoffending than the youth community sentencing in part 1.

Hugo Swire: I totally concur with what my hon. Friend says, but does he share my concern about the ready availability of drugs within the prison system? Does he think that the Government have done enough over the past decade to deal with what is an epidemic?

Philip Dunne: I am grateful for that perceptive point. I agree that drugs are readily available within the prison population, and the Government seem to have nothing in the Bill to seek to address that problem.
	There are rehabilitation formats that work. I have an excellent one in my constituency in Willowdene Farm, which has an exemplary track record in getting people off drugs. Many of them have offended and gone to that place following a prison term. However, the Home Office budget for the drugs intervention programme has been cut 13 per cent. this year. It is currently £149 million. It was over £170 million last year. That is another example of the Government saying that they are going to try to do something and the controller of the purse strings, our new Prime Minister, cutting resources to the Home Office. Consequently, the Home Office is having to make cuts in those programmes.  [Interruption.] Does the Minister wish to intervene?

Vernon Coaker: indicated dissent.

Philip Dunne: Clause 114 is a seemingly innocuous clause about the inspection of police authorities and grants the Audit Commission wide-ranging powers to inspect the performance of police authorities. The present powers are limited to compliance with best value.
	That raises a few suspicions in my mind. It was the police authorities, along with a number of hon. Members and a small number of courageous chief constables that led the resistance to the outrageous proposals to regionalise our police forces last year. I have a nasty feeling that this is the Government's way of getting back at police authorities. It is a classic example of the centralising tendency of this Government to seek to impose from the centre their will on bodies over which they do not at present have complete control. That is another missed opportunity. Instead of seeking to control police authorities in the same way that policing priorities are controlled from Whitehall, the Bill should be looking at a much bolder option—providing genuine local accountability to our police forces by introducing, for example, elected police commissioners. That would give local people a real opportunity to direct police priorities to reflect the problems in their areas.
	One of the issues that I have noticed during my parliamentary service has been the degree to which our police are directed by the prevailing urban preoccupations of Whitehall to seek criminals for crimes that do not exist in many rural areas. Local accountability through an elected police commissioner would deal with that centralising problem. That is another opportunity that the Bill has missed.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Before I call the next speaker, may I say to the House that time is running out and a large number of Members are seeking to catch my eye? If hon. Members could take less than their allotted 10 minutes, it would be helpful to me and to their colleagues.

Martin Salter: I rise to support the Bill, which contains many measures that we welcome in my constituency. I particularly welcome the commitment that we had from the Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw), to introduce a new crime outlawing homophobic hate crimes, which will be welcomed by many in the Christian community and across all other faiths.
	The Bill will bring in violent offender orders, of which we have heard much today, and will extend the existing crackhouse closure powers. That is particularly appropriate in Reading, because Reading borough council and the local police authority were the first to use the crackhouse closure powers with good effect. We have banged down many doors in Reading and shut down establishments that were making life a misery for law-abiding citizens who lived nearby.
	I am pleased with, and will note with interest, the development of the youth rehabilitation orders. I agreed with some of the response to my intervention on the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies) in terms of the quite scandalous rates of reoffending in our young offenders institutions. It was my privilege at the Labour party conference to share a platform with the Minister of State on that subject. I commend to all hon. Members the excellent work of the national grid scheme, which is providing apprenticeships for young offenders to learn a trade and to be able to compete in the employment market once they have completed their sentences. I accept that prisoners are cherry-picked to go on the scheme—it started life in Reading prison, which is why I am highlighting it—reoffending rates have been cut from 70 per cent to 7 per cent. Give them a future, training and the chance of a job and there is a very good chance we might see those concerned not walking back through the doors of a prison or young offenders institution in the future. That is the way forward.
	I really want to talk about part 6 of the Bill, which is the culmination of a three-year campaign to try to bring justice for Jane Longhurst, who was brutally murdered by Graham Coutts, a self-confessed addict of violent internet pornography. We do not want justice for Jane through the criminal justice system, because Coutts is doing a very long time in prison and both of his appeals, I am delighted to say, have been rejected. We want justice for Jane through the parliamentary system because, frankly, the internet has changed everything.
	The extreme material that will be outlawed by the Bill covers acts and imagery that are already illegal under the Obscene Publications Act—legislation that was introduced in an age before computers and the internet, to deal with newsagents and publishers. We cannot go after the publisher of material if it is from an internet site whose server may be based in Guatemala and contains, produces or puts into cyberspace images of young women being captured, raped live on camera and sometimes killed to feed this evil trade and to promote private profit and sexual gratification. We have to go after the imagery itself. We must build on the successful legislation that has outlawed images of child pornography. If we cut that end of the market, we start to deal with the trade, and that is exactly what part 6 of the Bill—a part that is well crafted, sensible and well thought through—seeks to do.
	I have received opposition, as have my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (David Lepper) and others, from groups claiming to represent the bondage, domination and sado-masochistic communities. I have learned that they organise themselves into munch clubs—I do not want to go any further into that. Let me make it clear to them that nobody is seeking to introduce a new level of censorship; we are talking about imagery that is already illegal. If people want to do weird things to each other they still can, but I say, "Don't put it on the internet." I do not need to see it and nor do my constituents—and, more importantly and seriously, those of an unbalanced mind who could be tipped over the edge by violent and extreme imagery do not need to see it, and we do not need to live with the consequences of their actions if they were to see it.
	Those of us who have been involved in the issue and this three-year campaign on it are aware of the background, but it might be useful if we were to set out some of the steps that have led to our being, I hope, able to celebrate the start of the passage of these measures into legislation. The House has not had an opportunity to debate this issue in full since the Adjournment debates secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion in May 2004.
	On March 14 2003, Brighton schoolteacher Jane Longhurst was horrifically murdered by a self-confessed addict of violent internet pornography. The murderer, Graham Coutts, admitted watching sites featuring necrophilia and violence against women only hours before he killed Jane. He was jailed for life and his appeals against the convictions were rejected. Anyone who saw the CCTV images broadcast on regional television of Coutts revisiting the storage unit where he kept Jane Longhurst's body can be left with no other impression than that dark and evil forces were at work in the mind of that individual. Jane's mother, Liz, comes from Reading, which is why I am involved. She is convinced that had it not been for the corrupting effect of extreme internet sites her daughter would still be alive today.
	Outside Lewes Crown court on the day that Graham Coutts was first convicted of Jane's murder, Liz Longhurst appealed to the public and politicians to begin a campaign to protect vulnerable people from extreme images of the rape, torture and murder of women for sexual gratification and private profit. On March 8 2004, there was an event in Reading to mark international women's day, at which the Jane Longhurst campaign against violent internet pornography was launched. It attracted the support of 180 Members of all parties for early-day motion 583, and 50,000 people signed a national petition which it was our privilege to present to Parliament as part of the consultation that was launched by previous Home Secretaries. We attracted the support of Amnesty International; that support was crucial in building a high profile for this campaign. Much more needs to be done, but this is a good start.
	Ideally, we would like blocking measures that prevent access—they now exist—to be brought in. We would like all PCs to be fitted with a blocking mechanism before they are sold on the open market—as cars are automatically fitted with seat belts. An obvious measure would be to go after the banks and credit card companies whose processing of payments lubricates this evil trade.
	It will be fitting if I end by quoting from a letter that Liz Longhurst sent today to me—in fact, she really sent it not to me, but to all Members.
	"Dear Martin,
	I am thrilled to realise that on Monday there will be the Second Reading of the Criminal Justice Bill which contains proposed legislation concerning extreme violent pornography.
	This is largely the result of your support"—
	and that of my colleagues—for
	"the Jane Longhurst Campaign and the petition which gathered a substantial number of signatures...I am very grateful too for the active support of David Blunkett and Charles Clarke, successive Home Secretaries, and Paul Goggins and Vernon Coaker who were inspired to incorporate the necessary measures into this Bill."
	I would like all Members to reflect on her concluding words:
	"If these measures can be enacted, I feel this will be a fitting memorial to my lovely daughter Jane who was murdered by a man addicted to extreme violent internet pornography."
	I urge all Members to support this Bill and to help not only to protect vulnerable people from the consequences of extreme pornographic imagery, but to truly achieve justice for Jane once and for all.

Philip Hollobone: I am disappointed with the Bill before us this evening for three reasons. First, it does not deal with the problem of illegal immigrants going missing when they jump out of the back of a lorry. Secondly, there is not enough in it about making parents responsible for their children's misbehaviour. Thirdly, nothing in it promotes, on the justice enforcement side of the equation, the status of persistent and prolific offenders, whom, on the Home Office side of the equation, the police are obliged to pursue. In no more than five minutes, I want to run through why those issues are of concern to people in Kettering.
	In the middle of September, an incident occurred in Northamptonshire whereby 16 illegal immigrants jumped out of the back of a lorry. Three of them were apprehended by Northamptonshire police, who telephoned the Border and Immigration Agency, only to be told, "Let them go. Let them make their own way to the Border and Immigration Agency office in Croydon," which they then did. The  Northampton Chronicle and Echo rightly picked up on the outrage that this story caused in Northamptonshire. To think that illegal immigrants had been apprehended by the police, who were then effectively told by another agency to let them go. I was advised earlier in the debate that provision might be made in the UK Borders Bill for filling this loophole. I hope that in the winding-up remarks that guarantee will be given. If it is not, I hope to table an amendment to this Bill to ensure that this procedure does not happen in future.
	There is some attempt in the Bill to address the problem of youth misbehaviour, but there is not nearly enough about making parents responsible for the criminal activity of their youngsters. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. Dunne), I had the privilege of serving on the police parliamentary scheme, spending 22 days with the Northamptonshire force. One message that local police officers consistently sent to me was that there was very little in the way of sanction that they could impose on youths under 16 committing criminal offences. I said to them, "If the law were changed so that you could serve a fixed penalty notice not on them, but on their parents, for the offence that those youngsters had committed, would that make your job easier?" The universal response was, "Yes, it would." At the moment, there is effectively a gap in the law whereby no one, neither the youngster nor their parents, is made responsible for their criminal activity.
	The third issue is persistent and prolific offenders. I know that the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Gedling (Mr. Coaker), has pursued it thoroughly, but I want to draw the House's attention to it. The police are given targets for pursuing those known as persistent and prolific offenders—PPOs, to use the jargon. On the wall of Kettering police station, for example, are pictures of all the PPOs in the north Northamptonshire sector whom the police know about. They are pursuing them and they do catch them, but when they bring them before the courts, all too often they are released on bail to commit further offences. It seems to me that the definition that is applied by the police is not being used in the Courts Service. I want this Bill to address that issue, so that known troublemakers can effectively and quickly be locked up, and so that they do not commit crime again.

Desmond Turner: I will try to make my contribution brief, and it will also be uncharacteristically sycophantic. My right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor will not hear a word of criticism from me. He is going to receive pure, undiluted praise, because he promised in his opening speech that the Government would amend this legislation to include a new offence of incitement to hatred for reasons of sexual orientation. What had been intended to be an impassioned plea to the Government to take action will now be a message of absolute, undiluted gratitude.
	The Government have already legislated to provide for an offence of incitement to racial hatred and to religious hatred, and that has paved the way for protection on the grounds of sexuality. In Northern Ireland of course, the offence of incitement to hatred on the grounds of sexuality has already been instituted. That was done by the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr. Hanson) in his previous incarnation as a Northern Ireland Minister, and it has incurred virtually no controversy nor has it led to a rash of frivolous prosecutions. In other words, it has been accepted and understood, and we should extend that offence to the rest of the UK.
	It is only right that the protection that we already afford to potential victims of hatred because of their race should be extended to gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transsexuals who are as unable to choose their sexual identity as they are to choose their race. I note with sadness that the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), who spoke on behalf of the Opposition, did not tell us what approach they will take to the provision. It would be nice to know whether they will support a measure that I hope will have universal agreement in this House.
	It is not intended that incitement legislation should lead to a rash of prosecutions in the rest of the UK. Rather it should set out the basic principle, which should deter all but the most ardently homophobic, that it is not socially acceptable to incite hatred against gays, lesbians, bisexuals or transsexuals. They have equal civil and human rights with anybody else. Indeed, incitement to hatred for whatever reason should be totally unacceptable in a civilised society.
	This is a piece of legislation whose time has come. It will complete a raft of legislation on equalities that the Government have pursued over the past 10 years. I shall not recite the whole list, but outstanding examples include equalising the age of consent, rights to enter the forces, civil partnerships and the banning of discrimination in the provision of goods and services on grounds of sexuality. The pressure group Stonewall, which has provided invaluable support as well as putting pressure on the Government, has seen its agenda virtually completed. With incitement to hatred for reasons of sexuality, we have the final piece of the jigsaw on the table ready to be inserted.
	If anyone still doubts the need for protective legislation, they need only look at what is happening around them. Look for instance at some of the allegedly Christian websites in the UK. Christian Voice speaks of
	"young people who are being drawn into a lifestyle characterised by disease, degradation, death and denial."
	A site called Gay Conspiracy links homosexuality with paedophilia, which is a dreadful, ignorant libel on a significant section of our community. Some reggae groups have published lyrics urging the torture and murder of lesbians and gay men. Some record companies and artists have undertaken not to perform such material in future, but others have not and no legal action has yet been taken to prevent the sale of such material in Britain. The offence of incitement to hatred on the grounds of sexuality would rightly render such content liable to prosecution. Of course, the dear old British National party has also made homophobia a political campaign and promulgated the specious link between homosexuality and paedophilia.
	Hate crime is a rising issue. In many London boroughs, the Metropolitan police report an increase in homophobic hate crime and the trend is rising throughout the country. In my city of Brighton and Hove, the figures for homophobic crime reported to the Sussex police show an increase from 135 in 2005-06 to 184 in 2006-07. That is just one city. The majority of those cases were assaults, followed by public order and harassment offences.
	In Brighton, we are fortunate to have a police anti-victimisation unit. One of the sergeants who works there said:
	"As always the figures themselves tell an incomplete story. We believe that there is still a degree of under-reporting particularly amongst those who are victims of homophobic crime."
	The Home Office estimates that as much as 90 per cent. of homophobic hate crime goes unreported.
	Most of the House would agree that the case for action has been firmly established. If the Lord Chancellor wants any help with drafting, I can offer him a ready-drafted complete new clause for the Bill, but I am sure that he is already on the case.
	I conclude by repeating my gratitude to my right hon. Friend for promising action, and that gratitude will be mirrored, especially in my constituency of Brighton, Kemptown, by a large section of the community. I am proud of what the Government are proposing. I am proud of all that my Government have done in the field of equalities over the past 10 years.

Charles Walker: I shall endeavour to be brief as I know that other Members want to speak. I have a few observations about the Bill.
	I am all for building more prisons in the short term, but we have to make sure that in the long term people go to prison only once whenever possible, and that while they are in prison they receive the support they need, through education or addiction programmes, to become productive members of society. Prison should not be a revolving door and I hope that the Bill gives us the opportunity to improve the Prison Service to ensure that people are given a chance once they leave prison.
	My second point is about youth offending. As my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Hollobone) said, we must engender parental responsibility. The first time a youngster smashes down a bus shelter, the parents should pay a fine. The second time, they should pay a fine and pay for repair of the bus shelter and the third time, they should appear in court alongside their child to face a magistrate or a judge. Unfortunately, only when we start to hit parents in the pocket will they start to take responsibility for their children. Society has a role in raising young people, but no role is greater than that played by their parents.
	My third point relates to antisocial behaviour and alcohol. Most assaults against NHS staff—certainly in accident and emergency departments—are committed by people who are drunk. Most assaults in society are committed by people who are drunk. As a taxpayer, I am fed up with my taxes having to pay for the police to manage the people who commit such crimes. It is about time that we looked to the alcohol industry to pay a levy—a proper contribution—towards the policing of our streets and, if need be, the policing of our hospitals. Football teams pay for policing on match days, so the alcohol and pub industry should put their hand in their pocket to fund crime prevention on our streets and in our hospitals.
	I agree that citizenship should be earned; it is a great privilege to be a citizen of this country. If people come to this country and earn citizenship over 10 years that is a good thing, but if having earned citizenship they commit heinous and hideous crimes, there should be the possibility of revoking it. We may have to deport people to places with a less humane outlook than ours.
	My last point relates to the possession of extreme pornographic material. I, too, am concerned about what comes over the internet; there is some horrible, nasty and unpleasant stuff. Clauses 64 to 67 are not as good as they could be—there is potential for contradiction, such as in the case of a film called "Hostel Part II", which I have not seen but has been reported on by a number of people I trust. From beginning to end it depicts obscene, misogynistic acts of brutality against women—an hour and a half of brutality—yet that film has been passed by the British Board of Film Classification for public release to people aged 18 and over.
	I understand that, although the Bill will not make that film illegal, it could make it illegal for someone to take stills from that film, because they could be deemed to have a purely pornographic nature. If it were deemed that stills from a film such as "Hostel Part II" were of a pornographic and unacceptably violent nature, it seems madness that that film should be allowed on general release. I hope that, as the Bill is considered in Committee, we will look at those concerns to ensure that that part of the Bill is as watertight as it can be.
	I have spoken for four minutes, and I shall shut up and sit down.

John McDonnell: I will concentrate on clause 72 and be as quick as I possibly can.
	Earlier this year, I hosted a meeting of a coalition of organisations called Safety First, which is looking at issues that surround prostitution, particularly the plight of prostitutes and their families. The organisations include the National Association of Probation Officers, the Royal College of Nursing, the Sex Worker Project, the Multiple Choice Rehabilitation Centre, the Zacchaeus Trust, various religious leaders, the English Collective of Prostitutes, the GMB branch of sex workers and two brave individuals, Pauline Campbell—the mother of Sarah, who lost her life in Styal prison—and Toni Cole, the former prostitute who brought the first private prosecution for rape in this country.
	The coalition came together in the aftermath of the five young women who were murdered in Ipswich. The response of the community and people of Ipswich was not to blame the women themselves, but to do all that they possibly could to ensure the safety of such women in the future. The coalition pointed to the criminalisation of consenting sex as a major cause of risk to safety that prevents women from seeking assistance and protection and exiting prostitution. Why? Because criminalisation pushes prostitution underground. It makes women more vulnerable to attack and less accessible to support. Many felt strongly that, by focusing on remedies in the criminal law, we avoid the underlying issues and causes of women entering prostitution and the need to provide real support to allow them to exit it.
	The coalition fears that clause 72 will criminalise prostitution once again, and thousands of women face the risk of imprisonment as a result. The Secretary of State did not take us through clause 72 when he introduced the Bill, but the clause will introduce the compulsory rehabilitation order and promotes it as an alternative to a fine. Anyone who is arrested for loitering or soliciting will be forced to attend three meetings with a supervisor approved by the court
	"to promote...rehabilitation by assisting the offender...to address the causes of"
	their involvement in prostitution and to find ways to end that involvement. Failure to attend any of those sessions will result in a further summons and a possible 72 hours' imprisonment. Magistrates will have powers to make subsequent orders. So women could be forced on to a treadmill of orders, failure to attend, further orders and imprisonment, and round and round they go again.
	There is deep scepticism about the implications and effectiveness of these new orders. Within the criminal justice sector, NAPO has said that they will be unworkable and that they will turn the law back 25 years, to when imprisonment was the norm for prostitution. In the 1980s and '90s, the fines were increased, so that those who were unable to pay eventually went to prison. We found that, even then, 11,000 women were found guilty and put at risk of detention. In 2003, as a result of a lot of campaigning against such draconian measures for prostitution, on average, about 3,500 prostitutes were brought before the courts.
	NAPO's view is that, if the Bill goes through, we could return to a situation where up to 11,000 and more women are detained and imprisoned, when our prisons are overflowing. Magistrates will use these powers as an alternative to fines and will find them increasingly attractive. I shall briefly quote Harry Fletcher from NAPO, who said:
	"Thousands of prostitutes will be criminalised and face three days needlessly in jail at a time when the system is in meltdown."
	Such a proposal is practically almost irrelevant.
	John Furniss of the Multiple Choice Rehabilitation Centre said:
	"Three meetings is window dressing and meaningless. People will miss meetings due to their drug use."
	As we know, 93 per cent. of prostitutes have a drug dependency, according to Home Office figures. The proposal could be dangerously counter-productive. Siobhan Kilkenny from the Sex Worker Project says:
	"Criminalising these people in whatever way it is dressed up will make the most vulnerable and invisible more vulnerable and more invisible and allow tragedies like the Ipswich murders to happen again."
	Further stigmatisation will force people underground and make them more vulnerable to violence and rape; in the past 10 years, 60 women prostitutes have been murdered.
	There are alternatives. We are taking the wrong approach; we should be taking the approach recommended by the Home Office itself: moving away from traditional enforcement under police crackdowns, and shifting prostitution from being a policing problem to a welfare issue. In those reports, we have said that we need to understand why women go into prostitution and why it is that, as a result of drug dependency, unemployment, housing problems and poverty, they are forced into that role.
	We need to create and invest in an effective response, which was set out in the Home Office reports of 2004 and 2006: early intervention, multi-agency working training professionals, outreach workers, one-to-one support, fast-tracking into drugs programmes that are crucial to stabilisation, fast-tracking into emergency accommodation, advice and assistance and specialised support for victims of domestic violence.
	All those matters are ready to hand, but they require investment of resources, and I regret that there have been cuts in the drugs programmes in recent years. We need to move forward into a caring, welfare approach, rather than a criminal process. We need to look at the resources. On that basis, when the Bill comes back on Report, I will seek to remove clause 72 and insert clauses that realistically tackle the problem and measures that provide the alternative resources to invest in the solutions that are needed and that the Home Office itself has recognised.

Harry Cohen: I support much of the Bill, but I want to raise two separate matters. I shall be brief, because of the time available. First, I should like to mention sex. Clause 64(6)(b) mentions an image of an act
	"which appears to result...in serious injury to a person's anus, breasts or genitals".
	I agree with virtually all the clause, and I understand the motivation behind Liz Longhurst's campaign, but my problem is with the phrase "appears to". That will catch all sorts of things that it should not. I have several examples, but time precludes me from raising them. The Government should consider that sub-paragraph, which could be problematic for the future.
	Secondly, I want to raise the much more important issue of children. In the Bill and the notes on it, there are some 15 new conditions and requirements on youth rehabilitation orders—plus another one: the Secretary of State can do what he likes and set another condition on youngsters "by order". A lot of the conditions are okay in themselves, but the approach is unbalanced. For example, a youth offender team manager stated:
	"During the seven years that YOTs have been established, apart from limited finance to establish ISSPs, there has been no additional funding made available to enhance the quality of work with those already in the system. This is despite a 26 per cent. increase nationally in youth court business over the past four years."
	Rod Morgan, the former chair of the Youth Justice Board, says:
	"We are criminalising more and more children and young people—an increase of 26 per cent. between 2002 and 2006—in a period when all the evidence suggests that the incidence of youth offending fell."
	In June, I received a letter from the Howard League for Penal Reform that stated:
	"In statistics published by the Council of Europe in 2005, England and Wales was found to have jailed 2,274 children"—
	the figure has gone up since then—
	"compared to 1,456 in Germany, 628 in France, 73 children in the Netherlands and nine in Norway.
	The profligate use of prison for children, the infliction of pain and injury to control children behind closed doors, child deaths in custody, lack of physical exercise and the use of segregation blocks that might be said to resemble modern day dungeons, are all ways in which the treatment of children in custody amounts to child abuse and in some cases may actually be criminal...In 2002, when considering the last report of the UK government, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child stated that the government had to
	'establish a system of juvenile justice that fully integrates into its legislation, policies and practice the provisions and principles of the Convention', including by raising the minimum age for criminal responsibility, ensuring 'that no child can be tried as an adult irrespective of the circumstances or gravity of his/her offence', ensuring 'that detention of children is used as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time and that children are separated from adults in detention'".
	That just has not happened. What we have is a cluttering of the system with relatively minor cases, too many prosecutions instead of pre-court settlements, and insufficient discretion—for example, for the police to deal with matters in situ, or for youth offender teams, or for courts to filter out cases where children's welfare needs are readily apparent and should take priority. Cases such as those involving mental health or family neglect should be diverted away from the court system. Instead, we have adult Crown courts used for children, detention alongside adults, some sentences that are worse for children than for adults for the same offence, and restraint to such an extent that in a recent 18-month period there were more than 2,000 injuries to children in custody. The Howard League for Penal Reform says that, since January 2002, six children have died in custody. That amounts to degrading punishments, and detention not as a last resort, as it should be.
	The age of criminal responsibility is the lowest in Europe: 10 in England and Wales and eight in Scotland. A 10-year-old is presumed to be as criminally responsible as a fully mature adult. The Government insist that they will not revisit the age of criminal responsibility, but I strongly believe that there should be a proper review. There should, at least, be a layered response to children who commit offences. The welfare of the child should take precedent over being punitive and the child's continued development still needs to be nurtured, whatever the punishment. Rod Morgan argues that some changes for the better can be made administratively, but we have yet to see them and the Bill is an unbalanced approach to dealing with child offenders. Again, the Government should think again.

Evan Harris: I would like to associate myself with the remarks of the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), who spoke on the laws relating to prostitution. It is certainly true that, given all the reviews that have taken place, it is necessary for the Government to do something more about harm reduction and less about criminalisation. Only in that way will we be able better to protect the women involved in prostitution. In particular, it is essential that we crack down on the really serious and unacceptable side of the sex industry: the trafficking of women, their exploitation, the prostitution of children, which is an unacceptable evil, and the exploitative pimping that goes on. Those things should be concentrated on.
	In that respect, it is extremely disappointing that in the Home Secretary's recent announcement about reflection periods for victims of trafficking for sexual purposes there is still no plan or proposal by the Government to provide residency permits. Such permits have been provided in other countries, where they have had a significant impact, as the Joint Committee on Human Rights found in its inquiry into the matter. That inquiry included a trip to Italy, where such permits have been provided. There have been multiple prosecutions of the evil traffickers who are involved in the exploitation of women, simply because women are able to come forward—because they will get protection.
	I would also like to associate myself with the remarks made by the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Dr. Turner), who has a long tradition of campaigning on matters to do with equality on the grounds of sexual orientation. He is not entirely right that the Government's record on this matter has been uniformly good, because they started off very badly and slowly. However, recently their performance has picked up a lot, particularly with regard to the goods and services provisions, including those in Northern Ireland, which the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr. Hanson) was involved in and which were pretty tough—in fact, the judicial review found that they were a little too strong in certain areas.
	I feel—I speak as the president of Liberal Democrats for lesbian and gay equality—that there is a real problem with homophobic hate crime and it is right that there should be an offence of incitement to homophobic hatred. The only question that remains for me, and I suspect for colleagues on the Liberal Democrat Benches, is how that is balanced against free speech. It is regrettable that we did not have this offence before the offence of incitement to religious hatred, since I think that the incidence is greater. The best ways to tackle homophobic hatred are through proper, balanced sex and relationships education in the national curriculum that makes it clear that one cannot and should not stigmatise lesbian and gay people, and by tackling homophobic bullying far more assertively.
	As the Lord Chancellor himself accepted, there will have to be a debate on the wording of any offence, in order to ensure that people with whom I disagree, often coming from a religious perspective, do not find that their words are criminalised. The hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown, mentioned Christian Voice, which speaks about
	"young people who are being drawn into a lifestyle characterised by disease, degradation, death and denial."
	That is rubbish, and it is offensive—there is no doubt about that—but criminalising it would create major problems. It is far better to debate. I do not believe that people who hear pastors go out and commit violent criminal offences. I think that it is often thugs, and people who grow up believing that gay people should not have full rights, who commit those offences. I believe that we can find a compromise that will protect the ability of some religious organisations—and we are by no means talking about the majority of Christians, for example—to spout words that I think are horrible nonsense, but that should not be criminalised.
	Finally, on the issue of extreme pornography in part 6 of the Bill, as Liberty says in its briefing,
	"Extreme caution should be exercised when new criminal laws are imposed with the intention of imposing a subjective opinion on what is morally acceptable...the state should be required to provide justifications for legal restrictions on pornography, and to demonstrate that a proposed measure does not go further than is necessary."
	Liberty goes on to say that it is vital that
	"legitimate and undamaging behaviour is not unintentionally criminalised by carelessly drafted, over-broad criminal offences."
	It is concerned
	"about the breadth of the proposed new offence",
	which
	"might criminalise people who cause no harm to others and who possess pornographic material involving consensual participants."
	Ministers have not provided an evidence base for some of the material that will be covered by the measure. Despite the eloquent testimony that Members have given about an individual case, if we do not have evidence that the material causes harm, it is right that the House should subject the proposals to close scrutiny. We must ask why, for example, the Obscene Publications Act definition is not being used, and why another definition, which, it is argued, is broader, is being used. I can see no reference to compatibility with the Human Rights Act 1998 in the Government's explanatory memorandum, either; that will need to be tested. I would be grateful if, in his response, the Minister set out the evidence that justifies the measure. I understand that time is limited, so I shall leave my remarks there.

Kerry McCarthy: In the brief time that I have, I will focus on one aspect of the legislation: the proposals to tackle on-street prostitution in clauses 71 to 73. I will start by putting the matter into a local context. Parts of my constituency and the neighbouring constituency of Bristol, West, have been blighted for many years by highly visible on-street prostitution. I have seen it while out on patrol with the vice squad, when out on the beat with local police officers, and on numerous other occasions when I have been out and about in the constituency.
	I have seen one woman, who is well known to the local police, walking down the street in broad daylight with her skirt hitched up around her waist, effectively naked from the waist down—and this on one of the busiest main roads in Bristol. I have heard from a local resident who has had prostitutes tapping on his car window as he pulls into his drive, and on one occasion, even jumping into the passenger seat. He is terrified that the police will one day accuse him of kerb-crawling. Local residents complain of finding sex and drug-related debris, such as dirty needles, used condoms and contaminated foil, in areas where they walk their dogs, or where children play. There are two primary schools, May Park and Millpond, where young children coming out of the school gates in the middle of the afternoon have been confronted by prostitutes touting for business. What does a parent say to children in such a situation? I wholeheartedly support the underlying premise of the Government's strategy for prostitution—that we should challenge the view that street prostitution is inevitable and here to stay.
	Some people argue that it is not the state's role to interfere in how women choose to live their lives. They argue that women engaged in such work are exercising free choice, or are somehow in control of their actions, but I would ask them to speak to the woman whom I met the other day, who told me about the 14-year-old who works the street outside her front door. The child is regularly picked up by the police, taken into care, and just as regularly returns to the streets. Or they could talk to the woman whom I watched the vice squad apprehend last year. She was caught more or less in the act with a client, only half-hidden from the view of the street. She had just come out of prison. She told the police that she had kicked her heroin and crack habits, she was being tested regularly at her hostel accommodation, and she was keeping to her curfew. She was trying to get back her young children, who had been taken into care. And yet there she was, back out on the streets, within days of her release, entering into what any reasonable person would see as a totally sordid, totally soul-destroying sexual transaction with a complete stranger.
	Those people should also look at the figures in the regulatory impact assessment, which show that 85 per cent. of those involved in prostitution report having been physically abused by family members, and that 45 per cent. report being sexually abused by a relative. They also show that 75 per cent. of women were under 18 when they were originally coerced into prostitution, and 70 per cent. have spent time in care. As many as 95 per cent. use prostitution to support their own, and often a partner's, drug use.
	That is why I support the proposal in the Bill to introduce compulsory rehabilitative orders, with mandatory counselling, and the possibility of remanding people in prison for up to three days if they fail to comply with the court orders. I accept that there are concerns about this approach. The Prison Reform Trust, for example, has said that the provision
	"fails utterly to understand that vulnerable people with chaotic lives can't be asked to walk a tightrope".
	However, it is precisely because these people have such chaotic lives and are, in so many cases, not ready, able or willing to help themselves, that we have to be more determined in our approach. The alternative would be to allow them to descend into a downwards spiral, until possibly—just possibly—they decide of their own accord that they have reached rock bottom and need to pull themselves out of it. Of course, far too many women reach rock bottom and simply stay there.
	My local vice squad believes that there will have to be penalties if the new system is to work. Like virtually everyone else who responded to the "Paying the Price" consultation, it believes that the current system of fines just encourages street workers to go back to work to pay them off. So the vast majority of those apprehended for on-street prostitution in Bristol—around 83 per cent. of them—simply receive cautions. Of the few who do appear before the courts, some may be referred to drugs agencies, but there is no deterrent for those who choose not to attend rehabilitation programmes. The new proposals would introduce such a deterrent and could provide the incentive needed.
	I could go on to talk about the need for sufficient support structures—

Lynne Jones: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Kerry McCarthy: No, I am about to come to an end.
	I could go on to talk about the need for sufficient support structures within the voluntary sector, or about increased funding for drugs projects—as I have said in this place several times, Bristol is woefully underfunded in comparison to other cities—but I know that at least one other speaker on this side has been waiting a long time to speak, so I shall conclude on that remark.

Fiona Mactaggart: I will be brief. Members might recall that when I was the Minister in the Home Office responsible for prostitution strategy, I was labelled "Madam Minister" for wanting a brothel on every street corner, after I had suggested that two women working together in a flat should not be prosecuted for running a brothel. I am disappointed that that proposal is not in the Bill, and I would be interested to hear what the Minister has to say about that in his summing up. Will he tell me whether legislation would be required to achieve that?
	Since then, the same media have also accused me of being a priggish, power-crazed, interfering, feminist ideologue. This was because I argued on an issue that was raised during those debates. I was asked why the Government did not prosecute for rape men who paid for sex with trafficked women. The answer was that the way to discover trafficking and to prosecute the traffickers was often through the men who were those women's clients. At that point, it seemed right not to prosecute them because the women would be safer if we did not do so.
	However, I began to think that there must be a better way of doing this, so I looked up which countries in the world were better at reducing the incidence of trafficking. It became clear that about 800,000 people are trafficked across borders every year—four fifths of them women—usually for sex. It is estimated that 80 per cent. of the women in London's brothels are from overseas. So where is trafficking being reduced? There is clear evidence on this. A European study suggests that Sweden, which criminalises men who pay for sex, has massively reduced the incidence of trafficking. Between 400 and 600 women were trafficked into Sweden in 2003, compared with Denmark, where the number was between 2,000 and 4,000.
	Police officials confirm that this is the case. Kajsa Wahlberg, a detective inspector in the Swedish national criminal police, eavesdropping on telephone calls between traffickers, noted that they complained that Sweden was a bad market, and that buyers were afraid of getting caught. They said that they had to have an apartment, and that they had to move the women around. That police officer said that unlike brothels in Oslo or Copenhagen, where there might be 50 women in each, there were usually just two or three women in the brothels broken up in Sweden. Clearly, Sweden managed to drive down the incidence of trafficking by criminalising payment for sex.
	My view is that the Bill does not go far enough. On the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, I strongly urge the Minister to end today's modern slavery, which is women enslaved into providing sexual services. If we in Britain followed the Swedish model, we would, just by that act alone, reduce the trafficking and the enforced sexual slavery of women and make our society a better one for everyone to live in.

Edward Garnier: This has been a crowded debate, albeit one that we started late. If I may say so without being thought impolite, it is a tribute to the good behaviour of Members who restricted themselves to the allotted 10 minutes or less that as many as 19 hon. Members have been able to speak. I am the 20th Member to contribute to the debate.
	I begin by inviting the Minister to clarify the mess on the Order Paper whereby the programme motion suggests that Committee proceedings will come to an end on 30 October. That might be welcome to many, but it would not do much good for the scrutiny process. I have some fairly strong reservations about this House's scrutiny proceedings in any event, but to close down scrutiny of this Bill on 30 October would be an error. I dare say that the Minister and the Government can sort out that mess. If they attempt to do so, we will endeavour to co-operate. Where we will not co-operate is in respect of the carry-over motion. We disapprove of a Bill of this importance and complexity being carried over. It should have been introduced at the beginning, not the end, of a parliamentary Session and it should have been granted the full rigour of a decent period of scrutiny unencumbered by a break and a new Session of Parliament.
	This is not only the umpteenth Bill from this Department or its predecessor, but it is wholly typical of Government legislation in this field—and perhaps in others—that we are presented with a Bill that has 84 pages of text relating to the main clauses and about 150 pages of schedules. If you want to understand what the Bill is really about, Mr. Speaker, I suggest that you read the schedules first and then perhaps look into some of the clauses at leisure. That way, you will make more sense of the Bill.
	If I may say so, the Bill is rather like a plum duff: there is an awful lot of duff and one or two plums. We will support the picking out of the plums, but we are very unhappy with the duff—and there is plenty of it. When presented with a delicious-looking pudding by his wife, Winston Churchill said that the pudding "has no theme". This Bill has no theme: it is muddled and confused. As the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Alun Michael) suggested, even though he was able to give it his support, it is a Bill that could do with rather greater concentration on what it is intended to do.

Alun Michael: Will the hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

Edward Garnier: I will in a moment, but I have quite a lot to say in a short period of time, and I was not criticising him, but the Bill.

Alun Michael: I have been misquoted.

Edward Garnier: Well, we can deal with that in a minute or doubtless the right hon. Gentleman can write to the newspapers to get it sorted out— [Interruption.] The right hon. Gentleman has been absent, no doubt doing very important campaigning work on behalf of his benighted party over the last day or two.

Alun Michael: Will the hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

Edward Garnier: No. I have already said that I will come back to him. He has had plenty of time over the last 20 years to make his mark in the House.
	I want to welcome and congratulate our two maiden speakers, the hon. Members for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) and for Ealing, Southall (Mr. Sharma). Both Members represent entirely different constituencies—one in the north and one in west London—but both bring with them, if I may say so, the enthusiasm and keenness of new Members, which is very proper, and the proper pride that they have, both in their election and in the constitutional duty, which they have taken on, to represent their equally interesting but diverse constituencies.
	The hon. Member for Sedgefield properly mentioned his predecessor—a man who was quite familiar to many of us in the House, although it is probably fair to say that in the short time that the hon. Gentleman has been a Member of the House his attendance has perhaps been a little better than that of his predecessor. None the less, I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution this evening and look forward to further contributions. The only omission to which I can point in his Baedeker's tour is his failure to mention Sedgefield race course, which is well known to a number of us. I perhaps ought to tell him that the going for his party will get pretty sticky over the winter, as I hope he will come to appreciate.
	The hon. Member for Ealing, Southall claimed that his constituency is the home of Ealing comedy. We have learned, since the coming into the House of the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Stephen Pound), that the home of Ealing comedy is perhaps in that constituency, rather than the other. None the less, it was a pleasure to hear the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall speak this evening, and also to hear the proper praise and regard that he showed for his predecessor, the late Piara Khabra, who was well liked and is greatly missed.
	That said, may I, as quickly as I can, concentrate on a number of points that have been raised by the many speakers this evening? The former Home Secretary, now Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor, who has returned like the proverbial quadruped to this feast, entertained us with a discussion so diffuse and so wide ranging that he had to get down to the letter M, according to my note taking, before he completed his trawl through the Bill.
	It would be of great assistance to the law-making conduct of the House, and to Parliament as a whole, if, when we had a criminal justice Bill, it dealt with criminal justice, and when we had an immigration Bill, it dealt with immigration, and that neither incidentally dealt with all sorts of other things. Worthy aims though the other provisions seek to hit, the current process leads to rather complicated, and therefore less popularly understandable, Bills.  [Interruption.]
	Anyway, the fact that the Secretary of State, who like all good trainee barristers is mumbling to his leader, "He should shut up," will not prevent me from continuing to speak, because a great deal more needs to be said about this appalling Bill. As I say, there are 13 separate subjects which the right hon. Gentleman attempted to cover. It is hardly surprising that my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) was able to fillet what the right hon. Gentleman had to say, digest the good bits and spit out the bad. We shall continue that process in Committee.
	The right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), my constituency neighbour and the new Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, mentioned violent offender orders, now colloquially called VOOs, as well as immigration, sentencing and miscarriages of justice—several discrete areas that belong to the Bill and which will need a great deal of attention. I trust that he, in due course—if not in Committee, then certainly on Report—will apply his mind to improving the Bill because, my goodness, it certainly needs it.
	The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath), who helped us with the procedural aspects of the Bill, also went on to agree with the Conservative party on the need for honesty in sentencing, to have concerns about VOOs and to welcome one of the plums, if that is what it is, in this plum duff—the advance of the criminal law to protect NHS workers in hospitals. It may be that we shall see an amendment tabled to protect those working in GP surgeries. That point was raised by the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard).
	The hon. Members for Brighton, Pavilion (David Lepper) and for Brighton, Kemptown (Dr. Turner) mentioned similar but distinct issues. I must gently persuade the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown that he was wrong to criticise my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs for not mentioning homophobic crime—he did do so, and said that we would, as we always do, consider the matter with great care. The hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown talked about the issue generally, and we will look carefully at whatever amendment the Government bring forward before we reach a conclusion on the matter.
	The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion, the hon. Member for Reading, West (Martin Salter) and several other Labour Members—I hope that they will forgive me if I do not mention them by name—mentioned the problems of internet pornography. My hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) has been a long-standing champion of the need to improve the protection of children in particular from sex offences.  [Interruption.] Yes, there are 51 minutes in the hour, and there are probably a few more.
	The right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) mentioned the shaky foundations of the Bill, and listed a catalogue of issues that needed to be dealt with before it could properly become law. My hon. Friends the Members for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies), for Kettering (Mr. Hollobone), for Ludlow (Mr. Dunne) and for Broxbourne (Mr. Walker) each briefly but powerfully mentioned a host of issues demonstrating that the Bill needs huge improvement. Other hon. Members, such as the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), possibly the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Harry Cohen), and the hon. Members for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris), for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) and for Bristol, East (Kerry McCarthy) mentioned their concerns about the issue of prostitution. We agree with the Government that the expression "common prostitute" is inappropriate, ugly and wrong. We should be considering why those women are in prostitution—they are largely victims of drug abuse. I look forward to trying to persuade the Government, even in their last and rather sticky weeks or months of government, to improve the Bill in a way that renders it coherent and publicly acceptable.

David Hanson: Today's debate has been constructive, and I am sorry that I have only seven and a half minutes to reply to it. I welcome the broad measure of support from both sides of the House for many of the Bill's provisions.
	I want to welcome my two new hon. Friends the Members for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) and for Ealing, Southall (Mr. Sharma). My hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield made a good maiden speech; he has a hard act to follow, and he knows that. The values outlined in his speech, however, are the Labour values of progression, of support for communities and of reflecting his community, which will stand him in good stead in the House. Like him, I am the son of a coal miner, and we believed in aspiration. The aspiration that he showed for his constituency is welcome.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall also made an excellent maiden speech. He mentioned that the Leader of the Opposition had visited his constituency five times. I do not suspect that he will see him again in the near future. He not only follows a model MP in Piara Khabra, who was a sad loss, but sets a trend for the future, and I know that he will be a good constituency MP.
	First, may I satisfy both the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) and the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) in relation to the programme motion? The Government's intention is that the terms of the programme motion should properly give effect to the will of the House, which is that the Committee stage should continue if the carry-over motion is agreed. We will reflect on the terms of that programme motion, and in the event of it not meeting the House's and the Government's objectives, we will bring forward a further motion before the end of the current Session. With that assurance, I hope that hon. Members will vote for that programme motion this evening.
	Today's debate has dealt with a range of issues, not least that of the prison population. I have to say to the hon. and learned Member for Harborough that we do have 20,000 extra prison places, and 9,500 new prison places coming on-stream. As the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome and my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, West (Martin Salter) indicated, we have strong work to do on community sentences. The Bill will reduce prison places by just over 1,300 and will make a difference to sentencing policy.
	The difference between the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) and the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis), and between the hon. and learned Member for Harborough and the hon. Members for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies) and for Shipley (Philip Davies) who attended the debate, is quite marked. On the one hand, hon. Members are talking about building more and more prison places and, in the words of the right hon. Gentleman, spending as much it takes. At the same time, the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr. Walker) and the hon. and learned Member for Harborough want fewer people in prison and a more effective prison regime. The hon. Member for Monmouth wants to spend £6 billion on prison building during this Parliament, while Tory policy from the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs is to halve prison sentences, not to have honest sentencing.
	I welcome the Bill. It will bring forward a range of speedy, fair, efficient and simple measures, which will protect the public and deliver justice for all. My hon. Friends have particularly welcomed the measures on extreme pornography. I welcome Liz Longhurst's campaign in memory of her daughter Jane and the support of my hon. Friends the Members for Reading, West, for Brighton, Pavilion (David Lepper) and for other constituencies for the legislation. I will consider what the hon. Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) said, assess his contribution and see whether we can take further action.
	The Bill also contains significant new powers to tackle antisocial behaviour, particularly in relation to hospital premises. I welcome the words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Alun Michael) in support of those provisions. I particularly welcome the announcement by my right hon. Friend the Lord High Chancellor on homophobic hatred. Provisions in a Bill previously brought into play in Northern Ireland will today send a strong message to society that homophobic hate crimes are not acceptable in a modern-day society. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Dr. Turner) for his support for that piece of legislation.

Gerald Howarth: Will the Minister give way?

David Hanson: The hon. Gentleman has not been in the Chamber all day, so I will not give way to him when there is no time left.
	I also want to comment on referral orders for soliciting, which were raised by my hon. Friends the Members for Bristol, East (Kerry McCarthy), for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), and the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris). For those convicted, the new referral order will help to try to break the cycle of prostitution by tackling some of its root causes, such as drug abuse. I know that hon. Members in all parts of the House hold various points of view on the issue, but there will be an opportunity in Committee to debate the provisions, which will look at breaking the causes of prostitution, as well as tackling some of the issues before the House today.
	I also very much welcome the youth rehabilitation order, as did my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth and, in part, my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Harry Cohen). My hon. Friend made various points about the order, but I hope he accepts that it will be about protecting the public, punishing the guilty and, crucially, rehabilitating the offender. We are also introducing the new youth rehabilitation order in the Bill, promoting the use of tough community penalties as an alternative to custody. It is our intention throughout prison policy, both for young people and for older offenders, to look at prevention as well as prison population issues.
	Community penalties are important, because experience has, sadly, shown that prison leads to a higher level of reoffending than community penalties. There is an agreement between the hon. and learned Member for Harborough and me that we need to consider strengthening community penalties and not just take the simple, blinkered view of many in the Conservative party and invest in prisons at the expense of community sentences and other activities.
	Today's debate is about looking at a range of issues to prevent crime and secure a reduction in reoffending. The Bill achieves a great deal. I remind the House that it comes against the background of crime coming down by 35 per cent. since 1997, of the risk of victim coming down to 24 per cent. and of a 40 per cent. increase in the number of offences brought to justice. That contrasts with the Conservative party, under which crime doubled. I commend the Bill to the House.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Bill accordingly read a Second time.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND IMMIGRATION BILL (PROGRAMME)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pur suant to Standing Order No. 83A (Programme motions),
	That the following provisions shall apply to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill:
	 Committal
	1. The Bill shall be committed to a Public Bill Committee.
	 Proceedings in Public Bill Committee 
	2. Proceedings in the Public Bill Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Tuesday 30th October 2007.
	3. The Public Bill Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.
	 Consideration and Third Reading
	4. Proceedings on consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the day on which those proceedings are commenced.
	5. Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on that day.
	6. Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to proceedings on consideration and Third Reading.
	 Other proceedings
	7. Any other proceedings on the Bill (including any proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments or on any further messages from the Lords) may be programmed. —[Claire Ward .]
	 The House divided: Ayes 294, Noes 188.

Question accordingly agreed to.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND IMMIGRATION BILL (CARRY-OVER)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 80A (1) (a) (carry-over of bills).
	That if, at the conclusion of this Session of Parliament, proceedings on the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill have not been completed, they shall be resumed in the next Session.— [Siobhain McDonagh.]
	 The House divided: Ayes 296, Noes 183.

Question accordingly agreed to.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND IMMIGRATION BILL [MONEY]

Queen's recommendation having been signified——
	 Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 52(1)(a) (Money resolutions and ways and means resolutions in connection with bills),
	That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill, it is expedient to authorise—
	(1) the payment out of money provided by Parliament of—
	(a) any expenditure incurred by virtue of the Act by a Minister of the Crown, and
	(b) any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable under any other Act out of money so provided, and
	(2) the payment of sums into the Consolidated Fund. —[ Siobhain McDonagh.]
	 Question agreed to.

PRE-PAYMENT ENERGY METERS

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn. —[Siobhain McDonagh.]

Alan Whitehead: I wish to address a continuing and worsening issue: the difference between what people who obtain their energy from pre-paid meters pay for their energy and what everybody else pays, especially those who pay by direct debit. The difference is substantial—perhaps 16 per cent., and rising, of the fuel bill of someone who is paying by pre-paid meter—and, by and large, it falls disproportionately on those who are least able to afford their energy supply.
	A substantial number of people have pre-pay meters—3.5 million electricity meters in 26 million meters overall and 2.2 million gas pre-pay meters in 20 million overall. People have pre-pay meters for a variety of reasons: some because it helps with budgeting; some because they got into debt under previous arrangements and the meter was installed, among other things, to repay their energy debts; and some because they have inherited the meters from previous tenants or owners. However, what is true for all of them, without exception, is that they pay more for energy using a pre-paid meter than direct debit customers pay. With the exception of customers of Scottish Power, they all pay more than the supplying company's standard tariff.
	Although not all pre-pay meter customers are in fuel poverty, or even among the lower paid, they are disproportionately disadvantaged compared to customers paying other tariffs. Forty per cent. of pre-pay customers are in the two lowest income deciles, which is twice as many as the comparator of all customers. Ten per cent. of pre-pay electricity customers are in fuel poverty compared with only 3.5 per cent. of direct debit customers. In short, those who need affordable energy most pay far more for it than those who do not. What is worse, because of the nature of pre-payment, most of them are not aware of that fact.
	The issue is not brand new. The recent energy White Paper stated that the
	"cost differential between direct debit and pre-payment meters (used by a relatively high proportion of low income households) is increasing, standing at about £120 for a combined gas and electricity bill compared to £84 in 2005".
	At the time, as I have pointed out, that was a 16 per cent. difference in the average gas and electricity bill.
	As the White Paper noted, the differential in 2005-06 was about £70, which was worse than the previous year, and it is even worse now due to the effect of aggressively low-priced online tariffs. The differential may now be about £150 for a combined gas and electricity bill, and it is running out of control.
	In January 2007, the matter was raised in the House by several Members during a debate on energy costs initiated by my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr. Clarke). The National Housing Federation constantly raises the issue with Members and Ministers, and I am indebted to the federation for advice and information for this debate. Members have tabled questions and a recent early-day motion on the subject attracted the signatures of 172 right hon. and hon. Members.
	I am not drawing the attention of the House to something new, but as matters stand, it seems that the differential is on an inexorably widening path and, as far as I can see, for no good reason other than that it is possible for energy companies to levy differential charges with little comeback from the regulatory authorities. It is stated by some of the energy companies, and indeed recently by Ofgem, that pre-pay meters cost more to administer than direct debits or standard tariffs; there is the meter, the cost of recalibrating when tariffs change and paying post offices and shops to provide top-up points for cards. Ofgem suggested that the overall cost merited a difference of £85 per year between a direct debit customer and a pre-paid meter customer.
	Those are raw data and do not include the fact that pre-paid meter income is 100 per cent. secure, unlike direct debits, which can fail through lack of funds, or standard bills, which can go unpaid or need chasing. Indeed, that security of payment is of significant benefit to the energy companies.
	Overall, those differentials, however things are cut, do not justify the differences in charge, nor do they explain why the difference keeps widening or why there is such a variation in charges between energy supply companies. Indeed, one company, Scottish Power, runs pre-pay meter tariffs that are lower than the standard tariff. How come, I wonder, it has not gone out of business by doing so? Indeed, the variations are quite considerable and the differential is highest on dual-fuel tariffs.
	Customers of British Gas pay £107 more on pre-pay gas meters than the average price for gas on direct debit and £33 more for electricity. Customers of EDF pay 25 per cent. on average more for gas pre-paid than for gas on direct debit and £8 more for electricity—the same as the standard tariff. Customers of npower pay £72 more on pre-pay gas meters than on an average direct debit and £81 more for electricity. Powergen customers pay £91 more for gas and £33 for electricity. Scottish and Southern customers pay £77 more on average for gas on pre-pay meters than on direct debit and £22 more for electricity. Customers of the only company with a lower tariff than the standard tariff—Scottish Power—pay £30 more on a pre-pay meter than on the average direct debit and £49 for electricity.
	For dual-fuel customers, the gap is even wider. npower has a gap of £184; British Gas, £152; Powergen, £141; Scottish and Southern, £115; Scottish Power, £93, but the price is cheaper than the standard dual-fuel tariff; and EDF, £68.
	Ofgem has recently announced that it intends to run a campaign to persuade pre-pay meter customers to switch. On the basis of those figures, that perhaps looks promising at first sight. Scottish Power should clean up. But there are big problems in relying on switching to get to grips with this problem. It might make some marginal difference, but only a marginal difference, for two reasons. Many pre-pay meter customers are unaware that they are paying more. The bills are not added up and compared in the way that they might be with other forms of tariff. Indeed, an Ipsos MORI prepayment customer workshop in February 2007 for Ofgem stated, after interviewing various participants, that
	"only three out of 20 gas pre-pay meter customers and seven out of 28 electricty pre-pay meter customers knew theirs was not the cheapest method of paying."
	In any event, some pre-pay meter holders are in debt because of recalibration—the process of back charging to recover delays in the recalibration of meters following tariff changes. That has gone down: 115,000 or so people are now in that situation. The figure was more than 400,000 before Ofgem took action in December 2006. However, those people will not be switchers, even if they know that their meters are more expensive. Larger numbers of people than that—some 500,000 electricity customers and 300,000 gas customers—are repaying debt incurred by non-prepayment meter arrangements. That represents 13 to 14 per cent. of all meter customers, and those people will not be switchers either. So what might we do?
	The White Paper also says:
	"We are concerned about these increases, and will look at ways to encourage best practice in protecting the most vulnerable consumers from the large differences in bills because of the payment method they use."
	I recognise that the social tariff arrangements that EDF and British Gas have adopted go some way to assist those who are most vulnerable with their payment of gas and electricity bills. The British Gas tariff matches that for most vulnerable customers to the direct debit tariff. Nevertheless, it does not directly address the pre-pay meter issue.
	Switching, as I have mentioned, is often of only dubious or marginal value. Perhaps Ofgem, instead of or in addition to its switching campaign, should introduce maximum tariff differentials. That might reflect the cost of pre-pay meters if all factors are genuinely taken into account, but my view is that it would not hurt energy companies simply to equalise tariffs. If Scottish Energy can do it and EDF can come close to it, so can all energy companies.
	In many ways, the long-term solution is the roll-out of real-time, remotely calibratable smart meters. There then will be no arguable or possibly justifiable differentiation between tariff costs, but that is some way away. Meanwhile, literally millions of customers will this winter be paying in inflated energy costs a sum getting on for the amount of the winter fuel allowance simply because they are, for whatever reason, on a pre-paid meter. That is not right; it should be put right.

Malcolm Wicks: In the traditional way, I most sincerely congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) on securing this debate on a matter of great concern to many colleagues in the House and to many outside it. I thank him for the very thoughtful way in which he has introduced the subject. He is a great authority on it and has a great track record on energy issues and the social aspects of energy. Indeed, at a meeting today with a non-governmental organisation, I heard about the great work that he is doing with combined heat and power in his constituency in Southampton.
	I want to respond to my hon. Friend's contribution as thoroughly as I can in the time allowed. In doing so, I shall say a little about the size and make-up of the pre-payment meter market, an issue that he has touched on. We are talking about a substantial market. There are 3.5 million electricity pre-payment meters and 2.25 million gas pre-payment meters in this country. More than a tenth of customers use these meters to pay for their gas or electricity supply and one in 50 customers uses such meters to repay debt.
	As my hon. Friend emphasised, pre-payment tariffs are not low, but installing and maintaining pre-payment meters is itself not a cheap exercise. An average credit meter costs £10 or less, but a pre-payment meter costs between £50 and £80 and requires a complex payment and support infrastructure involving suppliers, meter owners and thousands of retail outlets. There will inevitably be a tendency to charge less to those customers who make fewer demands on a company's systems compared with those who make more. Internet tariffs tend to be cheaper than direct debit; direct debit tends to be cheaper than standard credit; and standard credit, in turn, tends to be cheaper than pre-payment. However, there is more to be said about differentials, and I would like to return to that subject later.
	It is helpful—indeed, it adds an important nuance or complexity to the debate—to ask who uses pre-payment meters. They are found in a variety of places, including holiday homes, rooms let to students and so on. However, I think that no one would disagree with the view that low-income households constitute the majority of pre-payment customers. Indeed, some will have these meters because, for one reason or another in the more or less recent past, they have fallen into debt to their supplier.
	Less well known is the fact that pre-payment meter customers are by no means synonymous with the fuel poor and by the "fuel poor", I use the standard definition of those who spend or who are required to spend more than 10 per cent. of their income on the energy needed to heat their homes adequately. Although about a quarter of the fuel poor use pre-payment meters and although there is certainly a greater likelihood of fuel poverty if a household uses a pre-payment meter, three quarters of the fuel poor do not use such meters. Indeed, more fuel poor households pay their energy bills by direct debit than by pre-payment meter and only 5 per cent. of elderly people—the pensioners who make up a significant number of the fuel poor—use pre-payment meters.
	If we want to help the low-income customers who use pre-payment meters, the conclusion that we can draw is that we can take one of two broad approaches, although some might argue for a blend of the two. The first is to focus on customers in terms of the type of meter that they use and the second is to focus on low-income customers irrespective of their payment method. Many of those who want to help, including, I think, my hon. Friend, are attracted to the first approach, but I am not saying that he is not also attracted to a blend with the second as well. There is nothing wrong in that, but inevitably the focus of those attracted to the first approach makes them impatient for the Government or the regulator to take specific measures of some sort.
	What sort of measures are we talking about? The model we hear most about involves forcing gas and electricity suppliers to reduce pre-payment tariffs to levels similar to those paid by direct debit customers. Much of that was the force of my colleague's analysis.
	The difficulty is that the cost of any reduction in pre-payment meter prices forced on suppliers by the Government or the regulator might not simply be borne with a smile by companies and their shareholders. Like other costs, it would probably be passed on to the customer, and therefore not only better-off customers, but the poorest customers who are not on pre-payment meters, would pay more. The worry is that the poor would be subsidised by some of the very poor, and so on. That is the nuance, or complexity, that I wanted to introduce into the discussion.
	There is a sense in which, as my hon. Friend said, there is statistical support for the fact that differentials have risen far enough to give rise to concern, and to call for an explanation. I refer not just to direct debit and pre-payment meter differentials, but to differentials between direct debit and standard credit. All suppliers have been considering their tariff structures. I may have more up-to-date information than my hon. Friend, because this is fairly quickly moving territory. EDF and Scottish and Southern Energy have equalised their standard credit and pre-payment prices for electricity, while Scottish Power offers pre-payment customers a lower price for both fuels than that paid by standard credit customers. Other suppliers have also acted in this area by introducing social tariffs for vulnerable households that either remove the differential or, in some cases, offer customers prices that are below even direct debit levels. I am in the midst of a series of discussions with the chief executives of our major supply companies on this and related social policy matters. Without prejudging the issue, I should report to the House that I will soon be meeting Sir John Mogg, the Chairman of Ofgem, to discuss the matter with him.
	I would like to talk about what we are doing, and what more we will be doing, to get at what I see as the real heart of the problem. That is how—rather than focusing narrowly on the pre-payment tariff—we improve the lot of low-income customers as a whole. We need to redouble our efforts to increase understanding of the market and how customers can use it to cut their energy bills. There are two simple messages. First, there are still big gains to be had from switching supplier, and half of us have not taken that most basic step. I do not think that, even under freedom of information legislation, I will say what half I fall into, although things have been busy recently. There are big gains to be had from switching payment method. Why not use the differential as a trigger to look at paying in other ways? Almost all of the population have bank accounts or can open basic accounts with direct debit facilities. We should encourage people to use them. I fully appreciate that some customers are using a pre-payment meter to pay off debt, but the overwhelming majority are not and that majority could save £200 a year by switching supplier and payment method. That is a message that the Government, Ofgem and bodies such as Energywatch have pushed hard, and continue to push.
	There are additional benefits. Just as suppliers like direct debit because accounts are much easier to administer, so customers using direct debit avoid the nuisance of recharging keys or buying tokens. Although pre-payment meters, Fuel Direct and weekly payments all have their place in the market—I am glad they are available—they can also signal self-imposed exclusion from the financial mainstream, which is in turn closely linked to wider social exclusion. If people want to keep their pre-payment meter, of course that is fine. If they want to stay with their incumbent supplier, fine. But let us do all that we can to ensure that these are positive decisions, not simply the product of inertia, because the very best interventions in markets are those that customers make for themselves.
	I hope that what I have said underlines the Government's commitment to addressing the problems faced by energy customers on low incomes. I am bound to say that I am very aware of the theme that often the poor pay more, not just for energy, but in many other fields. I am sensitive to that.
	I hope that I have explained why our preferred approach is not to treat pre-payment meter customers in quarantine, but to help them, as we help all low-income customers, irrespective of the payment method that they use. We encounter the same challenges in reaching and helping pre-payment customers as we do with other customers, and the same range of measures helps them as helps other customers. That does not mean that we will not keep a close watch on the treatment of pre-payment meter customers; I am keeping a close watch on it, as well as on the progress on recalibrating token meters and replacing them with more efficient key meters. Nor does it mean that we will not keep a close watch on tariffs and how they compare with other payment methods. I do see movement from supply companies on that, and I expect further movement in the months to come.
	Those are essential elements of the work of a Government concerned with customer protection and social justice, but that close watch will continue to form part of our larger strategy of helping low-income customers to reduce energy bills, improve their thermal comfort, and maximise their household income.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Adjourned accordingly at ten minutes to Eleven o'clock.